


Filthy/Gorgeous

by MirabileLectu



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Drugs, First Meetings, First Time, M/M, Prostitution, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:36:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 87,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirabileLectu/pseuds/MirabileLectu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if this <em>was</em> legal, even if there was nothing technically wrong with what he was doing he knew that if he were caught, or if he were seen by someone he knew, or if he were found out in any way the shame would never, ever die. What would his regiment say? What would his family say? What would anyone say if they discovered that John was currently in a cab on the way to pick up a male prostitute for the evening?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_This is a terrible idea._

No, scratch that. This wasn’t just a terrible idea. This was quite possibly the worst idea that John Watson had ever had, and that _included_ signing up for the Army when he knew there was a more than likely chance that he was going to be sent into an active war zone. Even though that had been a stupid decision of monumental proportions that had indirectly landed him in this very situation, it still paled in comparison to the idiocy of what he was about to do tonight. Because joining the Army, at the very least, was justifiable by some means – he could cite the love he bore for his country, the drive to serve others, the need to make a difference in a world that so desperately needed it as reasons for his poor choice to those who wondered and have not a question asked of him in return. The fact that he conveniently left out the need for _something_ dangerous, something insane, something ridiculous in his life to make him feel even the tiniest bit alive was just a side note, really.

It was that desire for something more, anything at all to make his heart beat with life and danger once more that drove him now. Life had been too quiet these last few weeks, so quiet that he felt like he was slowly unraveling at the seams from the maddening boredom of it all. He had tried everything he could think of to keep the tedium at bay: trying to write a blog post had been an exercise in frustrated futility, walking in the park had only bored him further when he saw absolutely nothing of interest there, not even fighting with Harry over the phone had managed to arouse any emotion in him other than weary resignation. But when he caught himself staring longingly at the loaded gun sitting heavy with memories and potential in the drawer of his desk, John knew that he needed to do something to distract himself, even if it was a terrible idea. Perhaps it _needed_ to be a terrible idea. Perhaps he needed to make a colossal mistake now to shake himself out of the circling gloom and ever-approaching despair that was closing in on him so that he could come back to reality, back to responsibility, back to everything that he had been before this need for adrenaline and danger and idiocy had taken over his brain.

But before he could return to normal, whatever normal was, he needed to do this one last, monumentally stupid thing. He needed to feel the danger singing in his blood, his heart pounding in his ears, his every nerve humming with so much risk and anticipation and excitement that he very nearly forgot all about the twisted mass of pain that his leg had been reduced to. How could he concentrate on the ridiculous agony of undamaged muscle now, when he was huddled into the back of a cab about to make one of the most absurdly pointless decisions he had ever made? How could he be bothered to remember the searing tear of a bullet into his shoulder when he was watching the lights of London flash by the window and feeling the time slip ever away as he drew ever closer to his goal? It wasn’t too late to turn back now. He could still tell the cabbie to turn around, to take him home, to take him anywhere other than the darkened street corner he had furtively looked up on the internet that was his destination. But he didn’t speak up, didn’t even move as he looked out the window and felt his pulse climb ever higher in anticipation of what he was about to do.

_Why am I doing it like this?_ He wondered idly to himself for the thousandth time, the words almost meaningless now as he repeated them again. _It’s not like there isn’t another way for me to go about this that won’t potentially end in humiliation, or God knows what diseases, or something worse._ It was true, the ultimate goal of this excursion _could_ be accomplished any number of other ways – whether by means of a bar or a website or even just chatting people as he met them, there was no shortage of ways for John Watson to meet someone that did not involve the hasty exchange of cash in the darkness. Countless conquests on multiple continents were enough to prove that John was no stranger to such methods, but even the thrill of the chase and the joy of victory would not begin to satisfy him now. He needed the forbidden, he needed the illicit, he needed the _danger_ that this evening promised him. Because even if it _was_ legal, even if there was nothing technically wrong with what he was doing he knew that if he were caught, or if he were seen by someone he knew, or if he were found out in any way the shame would never, ever die. What would his regiment say? What would his _family_ say? What would anyone say if they discovered that he was currently in a cab on the way to pick up a male prostitute for the evening?

He didn’t even know where this ridiculous idea had come from in the first place. It wasn’t like he regularly thought about picking up escorts, not even when he was suffering from a particularly bad dry spell that was threatening to drive him mad. Paying for sex was simply something that never crossed his mind as a solution, not when he knew that if he just tried hard enough at the local pub or dragged himself down to the dance clubs he despised so much he was bound to find something eventually. But it wasn’t about suffering a dry spell, not this time. The sex wasn’t even the motivation this time, although it would certainly be a more than welcome side benefit that he was looking forward to eagerly. No, it was the lure of the forbidden that called him inexorably onwards, the call of something so insane that he should have never even entertained the notion that first fanned the spark of an idea into a flame that consumed his every waking thought until he was driven into action. There were even other ways that he could purchase sex, he knew. He could go through a reputable website, or find the highest-class escort he could afford on his modest pension, or employ a service that was specifically designed to send lovely young ladies his direction. But that wasn’t enough, not by any means. It had to be like this – in the dark, in a cab, on the street with the threat of discovery just around every corner. And he needed a man. No matter that he usually preferred the softness of a woman’s warmth, tonight he needed someone hard, and powerful, and strong.

Just the thought of the man he could find waiting for him on a darkened street corner was enough to send his heart racing once more, and he leaned forward eagerly in his seat to look out of the window of the cab in anticipation. They were close now, so close to the area of town that he had been informed would give him exactly what he was looking for. He had never been to this part of London before, but just looking at the state of the buildings and the street that they were headed down was enough to tell him that they were drawing near. Darkness crowded in around them as they traveled, buildings tall and crooked and filled with the secrets of decades of silent vigil leaning in around them to block out any whisper of the world beyond. Pools of glowing warmth gathered and fled beneath flickering streetlights to reveal the dirty glamour of the pavement beneath and cast uncertain spotlights on the residents who roamed there.

Ah yes, there they were. Coming out from the shadows as cars flashed by, leaning desultorily against buildings and posts and parked cars, showing themselves for the world to see in hopes of catching an eye and a wink and the nod they desired. They were all here: young and old, exotic and plain, beauties obviously on their way up in the world and the desperate in their tattered finery on their way back down. The women far outnumbered the men of course, flashing long expanses of white leg and tantalizing amounts of breast at anyone who drew near as they catcalled and strutted their way up and down the street as if they owned it. But there were men too hidden among the ladies who so overshadowed them, men young and beautiful in their strength and virility who lounged with artful carelessness against walls in clothing that left nothing at all to the imagination.

The cabbie who had smirked at John knowingly when he had mumbled his directions slowed the car down to a crawl, evidently more than familiar with the proceedings and kind enough to accommodate the embarrassed but excited fare in the backseat. John leaned forward to look out the window, eyes wide and heart thumping as he scanned the throng of eager bodies for the one he would take home with him. The possibilities danced before his eyes, endless in their sinful delight. Young men, barely more than boys really, flexed the muscles they tended so carefully as they preened and eyed him with sly coquettishness. Older men stood more solid and yet just as tempting, promising strength and power and a hundred other things that made John’s head spin at the barest imagining. But no, none of them were right. Even if he could not pinpoint exactly _what_ he was looking for tonight, he knew that none of these men with their bulging muscles and sleek, oiled elegance were what he wanted, what he needed to fulfill the desire that had taken him over. These creatures of the night, as gorgeous as they were, as tempting as they were with their beauty and sultry promises, were not the man he was searching for with mindless determination.

But wait, _there_. Apart from the others, on his own corner that was shrouded in darkness and smoke that poured from the end of a flickering cigarette, stood a man that made John’s heart skip in its frantic racing and his breath catch just _so_ in his throat. He was gorgeous, though nothing like the conventional, professional beauties who stood apart from him in every way imaginable. They blanketed themselves in confidence and swagger and a thin skin of pride, but beneath that there was nothing. Nothing exciting, nothing dangerous, nothing that called to John the way the mystery and darkness and coiled _potential_ of this strange man sang in John’s ears and drew his eyes like magnets. The man wasn’t even doing anything, simply leaning against a light post and smoking with sinful elegance, lips curling around his cigarette like a lover and dragging smoke into his lungs in a rhythm so hypnotic that John could not look away. He was strange, and aloof, and the most beautiful thing that John had ever seen. John had to have him.

“Wait, stop. Stop here.” His voice was rough as he spoke to the cabbie, husky with sudden desire and excitement as he stared at the man lounging so elegantly on a street corner that he seemed perfectly at home there. John knew he should be ashamed of being affected this way, that he should try to hide his excitement from the total stranger who was driving him and try to present himself as calm and collected for what was to come. But how could he? This was too new, too exciting, too much for him to process to stop and worry about how his voice broke in anticipation. So let the cabbie’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at the person he had chosen – he had more important things to worry about right now.

The cab slid to a stop in front of the man who was still leaning against the post with not a care in the world. Everything about him was incongruous, from the way he stood to the clothing he wore to the expression of absolute disdain and disinterest that schooled his face into calm impassivity. Where all of the other men were posed to carefully display their most alluring attributes, whether by flexing powerful arms or standing with legs spread just so, this man simply leaned with careful nonchalance as though it did not matter to him one bit who saw him or what they thought. A great black coat was wrapped around him, highlighting the sharp angles and planes of his ghostly pale face even as it obscured his body entirely and left the viewer wondering what could possibly be hidden underneath. But it was that face, that haunting and impossible face that stared at John so intently it felt like he was the one being weighed and measured and inspected that stood out in such sharp opposition to all else and drew John in with an irresistible pull. This man did not bat his eyes at John, did not try to make himself look more appealing or sexy, he did not even smile as the two of them locked eyes through the window of the cab. He simply stared, and evaluated, and waited.

Finally, after an eternity of locked eyes and in-held breath and muscles so tightly tensed they were poised to explode, the man pushed himself languidly off of his resting place and sauntered slowly over to the waiting cab. He moved with carefully contained grace and power, and the breath seized in John’s throat once more to see the tantalizing hints of long limbs and lean body offered by the gaps in his coat. Realizing too late what was about to happen John fumbled at the button to lower the window with clumsy fingers, cursing his ineptitude and hoping that he didn’t seem like too much of a naïve clot with no idea what he was doing. The fact that he _was_ a naïve clot with not the first clue of how to proceed into this unfamiliar territory didn’t help that charade in the slightest. But it was too late to retreat now even if he wanted to, and within moments those piercing blue eyes were locked on John’s with laser intensity.

John had no idea what to say. How did one begin this conversation? Was he supposed to say hello, to try and strike up some pretence of conversation before they approached the topic they both knew was coming, or should he simply get down to business and start negotiating a price? The moments dragged out between them as John continued to hesitate in confusion, until finally he swallowed heavily and decided to simply bite the bullet and plunge ahead, consequences be damned.

“How much for a night?” The words were uncertain, unsure, and so awkward that John wanted to send the cab speeding away into the night where he could hide the angry red flush that was stealing over his face or the grimace that came with his question. But he held his ground, praying that he would not be laughed at and trying not to think too hard about how desperately he wanted the approval of the man he was going to pay for sex.

But instead of laughing at him or walking away, the man looked John up and down, eyes sliding quickly from face to hands to body in rapid succession before flicking back up to dance teasingly over his lips. His own lips, full and hypnotic and gorgeous beyond imagining, curved into a tiny smirk that sent John’s stomach into knots as he answered “A hundred and fifty pounds.” The rumbling baritone of his voice nearly undid John right then, gravely with smoke and yet still liquid and deep and more enticing than anything John had ever heard. He paused, and his lips ticked upward into a smirk that was very nearly a grin. “Two hundred if you want kissing.”

“Christ, with a mouth like that you can sure as fuck bet I want kissing.” The words flew from John’s mouth before he even registered that he was saying them. His face flushed even redder, something he had not thought possible until that moment, and he hastily swung the door of the cab open to cover up his slip. From the small snort he heard as the man stepped away to let the door open, John was fairly certain it hadn’t worked at all. “Get in, then. You have a name?” he asked gruffly, trying to maintain at least the barest minimum of dignity in this ridiculous situation.

With another smirk he slid into the cab in a flurry of long coat and even longer limbs, dragging his hand suggestively along John’s thigh as he did so. “Sherlock.” The name barely even registered as that devilish hand burned its way across John’s leg, sending every nerve ending alight with sensation and clouding John’s mind with one thought and one thought only.

_YesmoreyespleasegodYES._

By the time Sherlock had settled himself in the seat across from John he had finally recovered his composure, or at least regained the use of his brain enough to adjust his trousers slightly and clear his throat roughly. “Evening, Sherlock. I’m John.”

The smirk that had danced over those gorgeous lips quirked momentarily into a full smile, brilliant in its intensity and so fleeting that John could not even be sure that he had seen it. “How very appropriate.” And with that wry statement the door of the cab slammed shut and they pulled away from the island of flickering lamplight into the darkness of London’s streets.

The cab ride that followed was one of the longest and most uncomfortable of John’s life. He had no idea what to do as he fidgeted uncomfortably under Sherlock’s gaze – should he try to make conversation now that they were alone together, or would that simply make things worse? Should he wait until they were back at his flat, or could he start right now? Oh Christ, how _would_ he start? Panic started to bubble up inside of him as the silence continued and Sherlock still did nothing but stare, and John began to wonder not for the first time if he was going about this all wrong. _I should have just found someone online or through one of those services. It would have been so much easier and less awkward, why am I such an idiot?_ But even as he was internally berating himself, John knew that he could never have taken the safe route, the comfortable route, the easy route to achieve his goal. That would have defeated the entire point of this evening, and no matter how uncomfortable the silence was now it was worth it entirely in the thrill of excitement that was coursing through John in a way he had not felt for far too long. And it was worth it, more than worth any troubles he might face, to have found the man sitting across from him with the passing lights of London dancing over pale skin and lighting up eyes so blue they were hardly to be believed.

Beheld up close and in the somewhat more steady lighting of the cab, Sherlock ( _God, that can’t be his real name, can it? No, that’s just some ridiculous fake name he came up with, it has to be._ ) was revealed to be not quite as ethereally, impossibly beautiful as he had appeared in the twilight gloom. Oh, he was still gorgeous beyond measure to be sure, but now that he sat but a foot away from John it was clear that he was in fact a creature of flesh and blood and not some figment of smoke and haze and lust that had wandered from the darkness. Skin so pale it was nearly translucent in the evening light revealed deep circles under luminous blue eyes and shadows cast in sharp relief by cheekbones so high and prominent that they hardly looked real. As John looked at him now he could see in the tight stretch of skin over those cheekbones and the empty draping of a too-large coat that Sherlock was thin, perhaps too thin, a creature of spun glass who looked as though he would shatter to pieces at the slightest touch. But John had seen the contained power of his movements as he walked over to the cab, and with the long practice of a man who has spent years assessing other men he knew that Sherlock was no wilting flower. He was perhaps not in the best of health, and could use more than a few good meals in conjunction with lots of sleep, but there was danger lurking beneath the surface of Sherlock’s fragility, and mystery, and something so dark it reached out to touch everything around him.

It should have frightened John. Sherlock, with his wild eyes and piercing glare and impossible mystery, would have frightened any sensible person. All of this, this whole situation, should have made John want to call the whole thing off before he could make a colossal mistake he would always regret.

It made him feel alive for the first time since he’d been shot.

After a cab ride so long that it should have taken them across the entirety of England, they finally arrived back at John’s tiny flatshare. John managed to pay the cabbie more money than he cared to think about without once making eye contact with the man, although he could have sworn that he saw a quick wink and grin from the man as he counted out the fare. _Oh God, this his humiliating_ he thought angrily as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, doing his best to ignore the looming presence of the man behind him and praying fervently that none of his neighbors had decided to look out their windows at this particular moment. He didn’t know any of them, and he doubted that any of them took any particular interest in his comings and goings, but the last thing he wanted was _anyone_ seeing him bringing a strange man back into his flat at one in the morning. And yet despite the fear that made his fingers numb and his heart race and his breath come sharp and painful in his chest, for the first time in months John knew that _yes_ , he was alive. He was afraid, utterly terrified of being discovered, and he was loving every single second of it. When the door finally swung open he looked over his shoulder to see Sherlock still standing impassively on the pavement and with a quick grin gestured that he should follow him inside.

John had never felt quite so much like a naughty teenager as he did now leading Sherlock through the darkened hallways of his building, but thankfully the man was a silent shadow behind him and before long they were safely within the walls of John’s flat with nosy neighbors none the wiser of the whispering iniquity that had passed them by. They were safe now, safe in the tiny flat that John so grudgingly called home, safe and sound and burdened with the weight of expectation and desire and loaded potential that had yet to begin. The room hummed with the energy of the moment, the shuddering anticipation of what was to come, the breathless tension of excitement and fear and the looming unknown.

Eager to begin but with no idea how to start, John cleared his throat slightly to break the silence and gestured around the small room with a wave of his hand. “Well, this is it. Um, it’s not much, sorry, but –“

“The two hundred quid” Sherlock said quietly, interrupting him dispassionately and sticking out his hand with brusque efficiency and expectation.

John flushed once more and fumbled in his pocket to fish out his wallet. “Oh, right, sorry. Um…” He trailed off uncertainly as he pulled out the cash, hesitating slightly before he handed it over.

But Sherlock seemed to read his mind and stepped over to take the money from him with a snort of derision. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. But as the odds are far more likely that you won’t pay me than I’ll run out on you, I always take my cash up front no matter what. It keeps things…simpler.” He pocketed the money in his coat quickly, not even bothering to count it before it disappeared into the depths of a coat that had certainly seen better days. With an elegant shrug of his shoulders the coat was removed and laid carefully over the back of the only chair in the room, revealing a lithe body sparsely clad in a black tee shirt and jeans so tight they made John’s eyes boggle. Those jeans clung obscenely to every angle and meager curve that Sherlock possessed, leaving nothing to the imagination and sending John’s pulse racing as he stared with no shame for how obvious he was being. Sherlock turned toward him slowly, using John’s attention to his best advantage and stretching just _so_ to hike up his shirt and reveal the tantalizing Vs running into the waistband of pants that were just barely visible.

“Well then. Shall we begin?”

Suddenly, before John could even nod an assent to the murmured question, Sherlock had crossed the room and pressed himself up against him. Long arms wrapped around his waist to pull him in close, an impossibly thin body molded itself to his own, and in moments lips hot and wet and searching were pressed to his. John nearly froze in shock, unable to believe that things were moving this quickly or that Sherlock’s tongue was already working its way into his mouth. Hands seemed to be all over his body, hot breath was washing over him, and he was already dizzy with the feeling of being touched, really touched for the first time in far too long. It was wonderful, to feel wanted like this even in this circumstance, but John’s mind still rebelled and instinct drove him to pull away from the suddenness of it all. _No, this isn’t right. This isn’t the way I wanted it._

He pulled away slightly, disentangling himself from Sherlock’s embrace and gasping out, “Wait, this isn’t –“

Sherlock did not pause in his attentions, rumbling words into John’s ear as he kissed and licked and bit his way down John’s neck and across his shoulders.“I know what you want, doctor. I know what you crave, what you cannot admit to even yourself that you long for in the dead of night when no one is around and the darkness seems to suffocate you with its emptiness. I know the slow death of the soul by encroaching tedium, the restlessness of a mind tearing itself apart for the lack of anything else, the feeling of madness creeping in around the corners of your mind when there is nothing there but your own thoughts to keep you company.”

 The flow of his words left John hypnotized, frozen still by too much sensation and a whisper that caressed his ear as gently as the hands working their way under his shirt to leave trails of electricity across his too-sensitive skin. But Sherlock returned him to reality with a sharp bite to the skin of his neck, and John could not quite bring himself to be bothered by either his jump of surprise or the low moan that escaped him. “I know what you feel, John. And I can distract you from it. Isn’t that what you want, to be distracted?”

“ _Yes_.” The word was breathed out in a desperate gasp, involuntary and truer than anything John had ever said before. He wanted it. He wanted to be distracted, entirely and completely, by this beautiful and impossible man he did not even know, and he wanted it more fiercely than he had ever wanted anything in his entire life. Looking up into the wide expanse of bright blue eyes, John knew with absolute certainty that Sherlock could give it to him, could take him out of his own brain long enough to forget the pain and the loneliness and the crushing monotony that threatened to swallow his life whole. Sherlock may be strange, may be dangerous, may even be slightly terrifying to a man like John who had lived his life according to tightly regimented rules and regulations, but he was very likely the one man who could save him from his own brain right now.

Wasting not another moment, John leaned forward and tangled his hands in Sherlock’s beautifully messy hair to pull him down into a searing kiss. This second kiss was far more active and passionate than the first, with John’s entire being and repressed energy and emotion thrown into this one moment. Sherlock was the more reserved of them this time as he let John kiss him and pull at his hair and run his free hand down his back to grab desperately at that gorgeous arse. John clung to Sherlock as though he would utterly fall apart if he let go, as though this man were the only thing holding him up in a world that was spinning wildly out of control. Perhaps he was – Sherlock was certainly the only thing that felt real any more, the only thing John could fix his mind on as it raced and spun and whirled faster than he could possibly manage. Before he even knew what he was doing, John was running his hands underneath the thin fabric of Sherlock’s shirt and pushing it up over his head, desperate to feel more, see more, touch every inch of gorgeous skin that he could get his hands on. Sherlock’s arms got caught up in the fabric of the shirt, stretched impossibly long over his head, and John paused momentarily to admire the picture of this incredible man arced so gracefully above him. Delicate limbs, marble-white flesh, neat rows of bright red dots fading to white as they ran up the insides of his forearms…

_Oh, no._

The intensity of his gaze, the gauntness of his face, the sag of his clothing on a body that clearly had lost too much weight too fast, it all made sense now. Sherlock was not simply underweight, he was not simply tired, he was not simply living too hard in a dangerous profession – he was a drug addict. Cocaine was the most likely suspect, although heroin was a terrifying alternative, and John nearly kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. He was a _doctor_ for Christ’s sake, how could he not have immediately recognized the obvious signs of a drug addiction? But the answer was simple, obvious even, and it whispered maliciously in the back of his head to flood him with guilt and shame for his actions. _You noticed, but you didn’t want to acknowledge it. You were too horny, too wrapped up in your stupid little fantasy to notice that you’d taken home a crack whore._ Horrified regret flooded through John and he jerked backwards, desperate to stop things before he made a mistake that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Sherlock brought his arms down slowly, watching John with a carefully neutral expression. His eyes tracked John’s every movement, every horrified facial expression, and after a moment of stunned silence he said quietly, “I’m clean.”

John snorted in disbelief, staring pointedly at the fresh trackmarks that stood out like angry, damning brands on skin as white as paper. “Clean? Please. I’m not an idiot, I know the mark of a fresh injection when I see one.”

“I mean it - I don’t have any diseases, and I always use a clean needle. I’ve never had unsafe sex with a client and I’ve never used a needle that wasn’t fresh out of the package.” The words were spoken calmly and with quiet certainty, with no trace of begging or frantic desperation. They were simply stated and facts, laid out before John for him to evaluate as he would. “The packet of condoms in your pocket clearly says that you intended to use protection no matter who you took home, which is smart of you considering the high risk of diseases in the prostitute population. I am clean, and you will be protected. There’s no reason for you to stop now.”

John hesitated, so torn that he felt like he was at war within himself. He shouldn’t do this, he _really_ shouldn’t. It was a bad enough idea to begin with, he had known that from the start, but to have sex with an unknown man who was clearly addicted to heavy drugs was quite possibly the worst idea he had ever had. It was stupid, it was dangerous, and it was so thrilling that John could feel every nerve in his body singing with the excitement of it. He wanted this, wanted Sherlock and all of his danger and wildness and impossible allure, and if the sight of those damned trackmarks made him recoil he could not help but admit to himself that the added danger they brought thrilled through his body like nothing he had felt before. Even as he felt his resolve slipping, melting away under the intensity of Sherlock’s gaze, one last whisper of common sense and ethics cried out desperately before vanishing into the ether.

 “Are you high right now?” He asked, praying with little hope that the answer would be no. No matter how much he longed for Sherlock, no matter how much he wanted to risk his health and everything else for this night of sheer insanity, he would not take advantage of a man who was impaired by a drug like cocaine.

Blue eyes with the tiniest pupils possible looked down at him steadily. “Does it matter?”

“I – yes of course it matters, how could you –“ he spluttered, appalled that anyone would ask such a question.

But Sherlock interrupted his horrified stutters smoothly, speaking with the even calm he had maintained since John first spotted him on that street corner a lifetime ago. “You paid me. I accepted the money. I am an adult, I am willing, and I’m under no duress that forced me into this situation. I am fully capable of making decisions for myself, and I have decided to take your money and have sex with you for it.” He moved towards John slowly, closing the distance that had opened between them like a predator moving in on his prey.

“You want proof that my mind is clear enough to have sex with you?” The caustic smirk returned and he stepped closer once more, looming into John’s space as eyes suddenly bright and alive flicked up and down his body in with rapid movements. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous, words spoken with absolute conviction and a force that made John want to pull away and throw himself at this incredible man all at once. “You are an army doctor, recently returned from service, likely in the deserts of either Afghanistan or Iraq. You are slowly going insane from the boredom of being invalided by an injury that is in your mind, and you hate yourself for it. You crave danger and excitement again, which is why you have come to me, of all people, of all _prostitutes,_ to feel that rush of danger again. You want to dominate me, to control me, to own me. Am I right?”

John could not breathe. He could barely think, his brain spinning, stuttering, stuck on one thing and one thing only. “Yes. God, yes. But how –“

“I see what others do not, and I observe what others miss. My job is to please people, and I’m good at it. Now come here and fuck me the way I know you want to.”

There was no further invitation needed. John lunged forward, grabbing Sherlock by the shoulders and spinning him around to push him hard against the wall. He moved in quickly, allowing no time for second thoughts or resistance, and within moments he was kissing Sherlock again with all the intensity that had been building inside him and threatening to explode for months. He kissed Sherlock hungrily, angrily, forcefully, and with no remorse at all for the bites he inflicted on those gorgeous lips or the ruthlessness of his searching tongue. Sherlock allowed it all, permitting that tongue to taste every inch of his mouth and only humming appreciatively in return , letting John’s hands roam freely over his body to touch and feel every piece of skin that he could find. It was desperate, it was frantic, it was everything that John had been craving with no idea that he needed it. In this moment when the world had been reduced to two bodies together and the fierce press of lips and tongues, John was _alive_ , truly alive in a way he had thought he would never feel again. Blood sang in his ears, roaring and rushing and drowning out everything that was not feeling Sherlock’s skin or reveling in the curling tension that was already building inside of him. But this, even this was not enough. He needed so much more.

He pulled away to look at those lips, those perfectly reddened and parted lips, and knew even with lust-clouded brain exactly what he needed. “Get on your knees.”

Sherlock sank down instantly as though he had been waiting for exactly those words, undoing John’s belt buckle with practiced ease and nimble fingers that seemed to dance faster than John could watch them. In moments the buckle was thrown open, his trousers were being unzipped, and breath hot and heavy and searing in its intensity was ghosting over the bulge in John’s pants that was already straining against the fabric. The feeling made him shiver, a shudder running through his entire body as a tongue sinful in its dexterity flicked out of that gorgeous mouth to run with teasing quickness along his length. “Oh, _God_ ” he groaned, unable to contain his moan or stop himself from burying his hand in Sherlock’s hair and thrusting forward to find that tongue once more. But Sherlock did not indulge him, refusing the insistent tugs in his hair in order to free the cock that was already painfully hard. He paused briefly, hesitating for a moment to look and measure and evaluate, but after a mere breath of stillness he was moving quickly once more.

With a quick motion Sherlock darted his fingers into John’s pocket to fish out the condoms he somehow had known were there, and in seconds John was watching in breathless fascination as a condom was ripped efficiently from its package and caught delicately in between lips parted into a sinful O that made John nearly buckle in anticipation. Sherlock raised those searching eyes to lock with John’s own that were certainly wide beyond imagining and hazy with lust, and in that moment – down on his knees with his hair held firmly in John’s grasp, marble skin glowing so pale in the dim light that his reddened lips stood out in stark contrast – he was the most gorgeous thing that John could possibly imagine. Filthy, yes, absolutely dirty and wicked and everything that John had never known that he longed for until now, and yet still so gorgeous that he made his heart nearly stop with his beauty. Finally, just when John felt like he would explode with the agony of waiting, Sherlock moved forward and in one smooth motion rolled the condom on while swallowing his cock down to its base.

“Oh, _fuck_!” John nearly shouted, tightening his grip in Sherlock’s hair and bucking forward in an involuntary thrust. The heat of his mouth, the pressure of his tongue, the feeling of having his entire length swallowed so deftly and so quickly nearly ended him then and there. Only pulling Sherlock’s hair so hard it must have been an agony and gritting his teeth around hisses of erratic breath kept him focused enough to concentrate on holding himself together through the onslaught of sensations. “Fuck, yes” he growled aggressively when he could find words one more, holding Sherlock in place and letting that mouth do its work. For his part Sherlock bore it admirably well, not once pulling away or gagging or pausing in the work of his tongue or his throat that was driving John insane.

John had no idea how long they stayed like that, with Sherlock kneeling before him and sucking his cock with fierce determination. The silence of the room was broken only by occasional grunts and moans from John as he lost himself in pleasure, interjected with the occasional rumbled out command to not fucking stop. Time seemed to freeze, the room vanished from around them, and the world narrowed down to nothing more than Sherlock’s lips and tongue wrapped around his cock steadily driving him towards an oblivion that was drawing rapidly ever nearer. As marvelous as this was, as much as he never wanted this to end, John knew that if Sherlock continued to suck him much longer he did not have a chance of lasting. It felt too good, and even a quick look down to see sinful scarlet lips stretched around his cock was nearly enough to finish him. He would be damned if he was going to miss his opportunity to fuck this gorgeous man, no matter how incredible this blowjob was.

With a forceful tug John pulled Sherlock away, groaning as his cock slid wetly out of his mouth. Sherlock gasped for breath and looked up at John once more, eyes questioning. “Take of your clothes and lie down on the bed” he ordered roughly, already stripping off the clothes that were stifling him. Sherlock rose and complied silently, squirming his way out of his jeans and pants in a practiced motion before going over and calmly laying down on his back on the tiny bed. John froze midway through removing his shirt, horrified at what he saw. While he was straining, eager, so hard that it was very nearly painful, Sherlock’s cock was lying limp and uninterested and as though nothing at all had occurred between them. John had known in the abstract that Sherlock would probably not be as interested in their encounter as he was, but to see the evidence before his eyes like this and to know that everything that had happened, everything that had John on the edge of exploding with pleasure and thrumming happiness meant absolutely nothing to the man who made it happen made John’s heart sink like a stone. The thought of having sex with a man who was not even a little bit interested in him made his stomach turn, and yet he wanted Sherlock with a burning intensity that nearly frightened him. He needed Sherlock, and soon.

Sherlock was watching him expectantly, obviously waiting for him to begin whatever he had planned and already resigned for whatever it would be. His quiet acceptance only fanned the spark that had lit within John, and the vague idea that had formed in his brain roared into life fully formed and desperate for completion. Quickly shedding the last of his clothing, John walked over to his nightstand and retrieved the bottle of lubricant that he had bought in preparation for tonight. With a quick toss he threw it over at a startled Sherlock who caught it deftly and immediately flipped the top open to pour a generous amount on his palm.

“Wait, stop” John ordered, coming over to stand in front of where Sherlock was spread before him. Just looking at this man laid out underneath him was enough to drive John to nearly pounce, but he held his resolve firm despite the painful leaking of his cock and the throbbing need to touch and be touched. “You’re going to get yourself ready for me. You’re going to open yourself for me with your fingers, you’re going to stroke yourself, and when you’re hard and leaking and ready for me, and only then, will I fuck you.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows shot upwards in momentary surprise. Of all the expectations he’d had for the evening, of all the things he had thought that John would order him to do, this had clearly not been one of them. John’s stomach turned briefly once more as the implications of what that surprise meant flashed through his mind, but he was soon distracted in the most enticing way possible as Sherlock coated his fingers generously in lubricant and reached down to play gently with his hole. John’s breath caught, eyes wide as long, elegant fingers teased and danced around his entrance with feather-light touch and incredible quickness. Around and across they fluttered, slick and teasing in their movements, finally slipping inside for a wonderful, fleeting, gorgeous moment. Not once did Sherlock take his eyes off of John, and the sight of those eyes widening briefly as his own fingers entered him and the sound of the tiny gasp that echoed hugely in the silent room were almost enough to undo him. Around and around the entrance once more, then back inside again, further now and remaining for longer.  With the tiniest of thrusts, the most delicate of movements, Sherlock was slowly fucking himself on his own finger, and it was the most beautiful thing that John had ever seen.

When he was able to briefly tear his eyes away from the sight of Sherlock gently opening himself, John saw with a flush of gratification that Sherlock’s previously limp penis was beginning to swell, finally showing some measure of the arousal that had threatened to make him explode since he first met this man. Seeing his hardening cock drove John into action, and he loomed over the man spread out in beautiful debauchery before him. He met Sherlock’s eyes, holding his gaze and waiting patiently for the gasp that told him that the first finger had finally made it all the way inside. “Two fingers now, if you please” he whispered hoarsely. Sherlock swallowed heavily before nodding ever so slightly. The tiny, breathy groan that escaped his lips told John all he needed to know about how willing Sherlock was to obey him.

“Good. Very good. God, you’re so fucking gorgeous like this I can’t even imagine what you’re going to look like when I’m fucking you until you come for me.” Sherlock moaned again, the sound nearly imperceptible but loud as a shout in John’s ears. “Oh, you like that? That’s good, because you _will_ come for me. I won’t stop until you do, you know.” He paused to lean over, stretching himself out over Sherlock and yet carefully not touching a single inch of him to whisper gruffly into his ear “Tell me how you like to be fucked. How you _actually_ want it, how you fantasize about being fucked, how I can make you moan and buck and come for me. Tell me.”

A gasp answered him, telling John that both fingers had found their way inside of Sherlock. “I – I –“ he stuttered, brain stuck spinning in place and clearly desperate for more sensation. But John would not relent, would not give him what he wanted until he got the answer that he had asked for. “Slow at first, and deep. Then faster, and harder” Sherlock breathed out, voice almost disbelieving as he said it.

“That’s good. Three fingers now, Sherlock. I need you all the way open before I can fuck you properly.” It would not be long now, not with the way Sherlock was vigorously grinding down on three fingers at once or how his cock was finally standing out hard and full and ready. Sherlock’s eyes fluttered close momentarily, breath hitching and hips bucking upward in an attempt to find the relief that John would not give him. Three fingers disappeared in and out of his hole, slipping in with ease and pulling out just as freely. Finally, when a drop of precome rolled slowly down his straining cock and he groaned without even trying to contain the sound, John knew that he was ready.

“Stop.” Sherlock obeyed the command instantly, stilling himself entirely and looking up at John in breathless anticipation. His eyes were bright, more alert and alive than John had seen them all evening, and the flush that had spread over his face and chest added so much life and vigor to his pallid form that he very nearly looked healthy. Not just healthy, happy. John’s determination to please Sherlock grew, and he leaned down to press a kiss to lips that were open and waiting for him. This kiss was far more delicate than the ones that had come before, lips lingering sweetly and tongues brushing against each other in gentle hesitation as they savored each other in calm togetherness. As they kissed John shifted himself forward and pressed the tip of cock against the entrance that was now ready and waiting for him, and with a groan that both men shared he pressed himself inside of Sherlock.

It took all of John’s strength not to slam into Sherlock and fuck him roughly until he finally came like he wanted. As that impossible man had somehow known, he wanted to possess Sherlock, to own him entirely and fuck him so hard that he screamed – but he would not. He would restrain himself, check the fury that was raging inside of him in order to fulfill the promise that he had made. Sherlock liked to be fucked slowly at first, and deeply, and so John moved with tantalizing slowness that made him want to scream. But perhaps that was better, no matter how maddening it was, because if the way he felt when he finally bottomed out inside of Sherlock was anything to go by he would not last more than a few rapid thrusts. Even through the condom, the feeling of an arse that was somehow still impossibly tight around his cock was driving him mad. Muscles contracted, bodies shifted, and John withdrew ever so slowly to thrust inwards once more. Sherlock moaned with pornographic obscenity, bucking upwards to receive John and shuddering as he was filled entirely. His eyes slipped closed again, breaking eye contact for the first time and throwing his head back to stretch out his long neck

Beads of precome were rolling down his cock now, and it was obvious to John how badly he wanted to be touched. “You want me to stroke you, don’t you?” A whine was his only answer, but it was all that John needed. “Too bad. You have to touch yourself, so I can watch you wank yourself off and come all over yourself. Stroke yourself for me Sherlock, and look at me as you do it.”

Sherlock snapped his head back to stare at John with pupils so wide that his eyes were nearly black. Slowly, as though he were afraid that he were doing something wrong, he moved his hand over to his cock and with heartbreaking hesitancy closed his hand over himself. The moment that he began to stroke, moving slowly up and down his cock with a sigh of relief, John started to speed up his thrusts, matching his rhythm to Sherlock’s own. “Oh, God” Sherlock sighed, speaking voluntarily for the first time since they had begun. He struggled to keep his eyes open and fixed on John, clearly wanting to toss his head back once more, but he managed with great difficulty to hold his gaze fixed on the eyes that were watching him with searing intensity. The pace of his stroking increased and John moved to match him, thrusts coming faster and deeper with every push and joining of slick and overheated flesh.

John knew he would not last much longer. It was a miracle that he had lasted this long, but seeing Sherlock fisting his own cock as he rocked back and forth under John’s thrusts was sending him rapidly spiraling towards an edge he could not escape from. Weeks, months of pent up energy were racing against their bonds, ready to explode out of him at any moment. But he needed Sherlock to come first, needed him to explode just as he would and feel the same pleasure that he could feel coming for him. He bent over and bit down on the collarbone that was standing out in a too-thin chest, startling a moan out of Sherlock and an answering growl of his own. “Now, Sherlock. I need you to come for me now.”

He got no answer, but the increased pace of Sherlock’s stroking was enough to tell him that the man underneath him was more than ready to comply. Sherlock arched and writhed under him, struggling against the onslaught of sensation and the relentless pounding of John’s thrusts and the orgasm that was rising inside of him. “John, I –“ he gasped, deep voice reduced to a needy whine.

“Yes, that’s it. Come for me Sherlock.”

And with that whispered command, every muscle in Sherlock’s body tensed and contracted as his orgasm ripped through him. His eyelids fluttered closed as he struggled to keep his eyes open like John had ordered, mouth falling open and a drawn-out groan that cut into John’s very core dragged its way from his lips. The moment seemed to last for an eternity, his cock pulsing and twitching with every drop of come that flew out of it to coat his chest. Just watching him like that, frozen in ecstasy and lost in the moment send John hurtling towards the edge he had been fighting so desperately, and with one final thrust he tumbled into oblivion.

When the last of his convulsions finally left him empty and wrung out and so blissfully blank that he felt as though he could happily melt away into nothingness, John gingerly pulled himself out of Sherlock with a hiss. With movements that barely registered in his happy haze he pulled the condom off and tossed it aside with absolutely no care taken for where it landed, then fished around on the floor for a tshirt to toss at Sherlock so he could clean himself up. His limbs were fast turning to jelly and his mind was barely functioning, and he was happier than he could remember being in longer than he cared to think about.

With an exhausted and exhilarated _fwump_ , John collapsed backward onto the bed in a daze of happiness that lifted him to float on a cloud far above the ground. “That was incredible. Absolutely incredible” he breathed out with a truly embarrassing grin, staring up at the ceiling in a stupor that he never wanted to wake from.

“Really?” Incredibly, Sherlock seemed surprised at John’s words despite the happy conviction with which they had been spoken. He was very carefully looking anywhere but at John, but it was obvious from the carefully controlled movements of his hands as he sat up and reached for his shirt what the answer meant to him.

John sat up in surprise, looking over at Sherlock curiously. “Yes, of course really. Why are you so surprised?”

“That’s not what people normally say after they’ve finished.”

“What do they normally say?” John asked slowly, hoping that the tiny inkling in the back of his brain would not be right.

With a caustic snort, Sherlock proved his expectation absolutely correct by drawling sardonically, “Get the fuck out before my wife gets home.”

“Oh,” John answered quietly, unable to think of anything else he could possibly say.

It shouldn’t shock him to hear those words, and it certainly shouldn’t make his heart twist slightly to see the sarcastic and cruel twist of Sherlock’s mouth as he said it. This man was a stranger, someone he would probably never see again – in fact he was someone that John should never see again, if he wanted to resume his normal life and become a healthy and sane person once more. But something about the coldness of Sherlock’s voice, the deadness of his eyes, the smile that contained nothing of warmth or humor or life, it struck John right to his very core. Sherlock was a broken man, and the jagged edges of his soul called out to the echoing pain in John that had lain buried and ignored for so long. He wanted to do _something_ for this man he had just met, something other than simply giving him money and not kicking him out of his flat the moment they were through. After what Sherlock had just done for John, he certainly owed him more than that.

“Listen,” he started uncertainly, “you don’t have to go yet, if you don’t want. I mean, you can stay here for a little bit, maybe sleep? I don’t know, only if you want to of course…” His words trailed off awkwardly into the silence of the room that suddenly seemed ready to swallow him whole.

Sherlock did not react, staring out into the darkened room with a stiff back and shoulders that could mean so many things John could not even begin to fathom them all. Was he offended by John’s offer? Was he suddenly afraid that John would become one of _those_ customers who thought that one night of sex meant they were hopelessly in love? Could he possibly be considering it? But before John could embarrass himself further or make another offer that he would very likely regret, Sherlock turned to look at him with a blankly neutral expression tinged with only the slightest hint of mild curiosity.

“Tell me, Dr. Watson, what sort of war injury allows a man to leave his cane at home when he feels like it?”

The lightness and nonchalance of his question caught John completely off his guard, and without thinking he answered “Cane – what cane?” in a voice that sounded nothing like his own.  Feeling as though his brain was struggling to catch up with events progressing far too quickly for him to ever keep up, he followed Sherlock’s pointed gaze across the room to where his cane, solid and steady and reproachful in its silent waiting, leaned forgotten and alone against his desk. His cane, the stick he needed to walk thanks to the stabbing pains in his uninjured leg and hated for the weakness and despair it represented, had been utterly forgotten in the excitement and anticipation of the evening. He had not thought of it once the whole night: not when he was hurrying out to catch a cab with a wallet full of cash and a chest full of nerves, not when his heart had stopped upon catching a glimpse of the ethereal creature lurking in the smoke, not when he had felt as though he would die from the pleasure exploding inside him. In the rush and danger and thrill of the night he had forgotten, entirely and completely, that he was injured. And the pain had vanished.

That ethereal creature who had been so wonderfully proven tangible watched him now as he gaped and floundered, the same small smirk that twisted his mouth into a quirk of biting humor and sardonic amusement gracing his lips once more. “Interesting” he murmured to himself.

The quiet hum of Sherlock’s voice roused John from his fascinated, puzzled stupor. “Interesting? What’s interesting?” he asked in a daze, still unable to keep up with everything that was happening to him.

Sherlock locked eyes with him, sending a shiver down John’s spine that repeated itself when he said with terrifying seriousness, “You are.”

After staring at him a moment longer, with a flurry of sudden motion and pent-up energy Sherlock stood and strode quickly across the room to grab his coat from where it hung on the back of the desk chair. Now that they were through, now that he had upended John’s life and left him gasping for air, he seemed intent on leaving as soon as he possibly could. John’s heart skipped a beat as the elegant, ragged coat was slipped on and shuffled into place with hasty efficiency, and he started forward slightly as he realized that Sherlock meant to leave this very instant. He couldn’t lose this man into the dark anonymity of the London night, not now, not after everything that had happened to him in the last few hours.

“Wait, are you leaving already?” he asked desperately, not caring one bit how pathetic he sounded for asking such a question.

Thankfully Sherlock did not seem to hear the anxiety in his question, or at least had chosen to ignore it. Fingers flew over buttons, folds of well-worn fabric were settled into place, and the dramatic collar was flipped up into place to frame a face serious and drawn once more. “The night is still young John. If I make it back out on the street soon enough I can find at least two more customers, three if I’m lucky. There’s no time in this business for sentimental nonsense.”

“Oh, right. That makes…sense I suppose. Well, thank you. For everything. I had a great time.” He very nearly visibly cringed at the trailing awkwardness of his words, bitter self-loathing warring with sinking despair inside of him.

But before John could run and hide in shame like he so wanted to, Sherlock was bending over the desk and scribbling something hastily on a scrap of paper.  As John watched frozen in miserable confusion he tore the corner of paper off and walked over to hold it out at arm’s length. “My mobile number.” When he received no answer from John but a blank stare, he sighed impatiently and gestured with the paper again. “I should think that’s an easier way of finding me rather than searching street corners when you want to purchase my services next time.”

_Next time?_ Elation bloomed in him, hot and painful and wonderful beyond measure. It made no sense to John that Sherlock would have any interest in seeing him again – wasn’t he just another customer? Did not hurting him or immediately kicking him out after they finished really merit repeat business? Apparently it did according to the paper he now held in disbelieving fingers, and John was sure that the phone number and initials “SH” that were a nearly-illegible scrawl on a tattered scrap of newspaper were the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. But even as he sat looking at the unexpected gift Sherlock was moving quickly again, striding over towards the door with purpose in his step and determination in his shoulders. A jolt of shock and panic ran through John to see him leaving, and he called after the rapidly vanishing form “Wait, but you didn’t even seem like you enjoyed yourself. Why are you giving me this?”

Sherlock paused halfway out the door and turned back to look at where John was sitting lost and confused and delighted on his bed. “Because you’re interesting. And because tonight was the first night in longer than I care to remember that I wasn’t bored.” A smile and a wink so fleeting they might have been figments of John’s rapidly whirling brain flitted over Sherlock’s face. “Evening.”

And with that, he vanished into the night to prowl the streets once more and leave a very confused army doctor to wonder what on earth had just happened to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was directly inspired by [this post](http://valeria2067.tumblr.com/post/23646347495/how-much-for-a-night-fifty-pounds-a-hundred) by the brilliant [valeria2067](http://valeria2067.tumblr.com), and all thanks is due to her for graciously allowing me to take the idea and run with it. Thanks is also of course due to my fabulous beta Jess for helping me smooth out some wrinkles and putting up with my nervous whining.  
> Credit for the title is owed to the Scissor Sisters song of the same name, which is shockingly appropriate for the story and provides an excellent soundtrack along with their entire album "Night Work". I make no apologies whatsoever if you suddenly find yourself dancing in your kitchen/bedroom/living room as a result of listening to it.


	2. Chapter 2

The piece of paper was taunting him.

That was stupid, of course. Not just stupid, it was patently absurd that John would ever think that a single piece of paper could do anything so silly as mock him as it sat silently on his desk. But still, despite the severe mental talking to he had given himself three times now, he could not possibly shake the feeling that the forlorn scrap of newspaper sitting on his desk was purposefully drawing his eye and ridiculing every decision he had ever made that resulted in it being there. The spidery scrawl of handwriting on the paper blazed out like a beacon in the semi-darkness of his flat, catching his attention at every turn and inviting him with subtle draw and siren song to simply give up, give in, and dial the number scribbled there. It was laughing at him, it really was.

None of this was supposed to have happened, not by a long shot. He wasn’t supposed to _still_ be losing himself in restless madness, still contemplating various methods of ruining his life, still looking for any excuse to do something stupidly dangerous just to feel the rush of adrenaline and excitement coursing through his veins for even a brief moment in time. That was supposed to have been taken care of, supposed to have been _fixed_ by the absurdly stupid thing he had already done as his last hurrah before settling back down into the placidity of civilian life. If purchasing a male prostitute off of a street corner hadn’t been enough of a terrible, ill-thought, idiotic decision to shake him out of the funk that had been plaguing him for the last several weeks, what on earth could be?

But apparently even that had not been enough. John had been foolish enough to think that his restless anxiety would be banished by one last big dangerous act, but of course he could never be that lucky. Oh, he had certainly done it. He had ventured out into the darkness of London’s streets at night when the world had quieted just the tiniest bit and the outcasts of the city had come out to play, flitting through the shadows and living lives that most people could never dream of. He had journeyed to a part of this city he had never imagined visiting before, where he was so obviously out of place he might as well have had a spotlight shining down upon him. And once there, he had picked up a random man off of a street corner, a man that he had never met before in his entire life, and he had paid that man for sex. It was stupid, absolutely stupid, and it had been one of the best nights of John’s life.

He could not shake the man from his mind. That impossible, beautiful, mysterious man who had called himself Sherlock. The man who had appeared like a vision out of the darkness and given John the most incredible night of his entire life. He had looked at John and seen straight through him, somehow seeing in one glance everything that John needed and desired and could never admit to looking for. He had seen straight through the staid exterior, the shell of calm and stability that John showed to the world around him, and had discovered in a single glance the desperation and yearning that lurked beneath. And he had set it free. With his touch, his voice, his body moving beneath John’s own, Sherlock had made John feel more alive than he had since before he had been left bleeding out on the desert sands a thousand miles from home. Sherlock had brought John back to life, and it had lasted for a single evening only.

And since that night there had not been one thing, not one single solitary thing on John’s mind besides calling the phone number that Sherlock had left for him. He could not say what on earth had motivated him to even keep the piece of paper in the first place – was it some sort of misplaced sentimentality, a desire to keep a token reminder of his adventure just as he kept the gun that tied him so firmly to the war that had ruined his life? It was possible, but even in the silence of his flat and the echoing of his own mind John could not lie to himself.  That paper was no mere token, no simple keepsake to remember his night by. It had a purpose, one that beckoned to him with the memory of touch and desire and words whispering into his ear even now with elusive temptation.

_My mobile number. I should think that’s an easier way of finding me rather than searching street corners when you want to purchase my services next time._

Not if. _When_.

But no, this was absurd. Even the fact that he had saved that damn phone number was ridiculous enough, much less entertaining the idea of calling Sherlock, and if John had any scrap of sanity left he would get up and throw the damn thing away this instant. Of all the things he needed in his life, and there were certainly many, another night with a prostitute was _not_ one of them. He needed a job, he needed a new flat, he needed a _life_ to get himself back into the world instead of simply floating through it like a leaf caught in an errant breeze. It had been long enough since he was sent back home, more than long enough to excuse the difficult process of readjusting to civilian life and dealing with the injuries he had sustained. What was he doing with himself now? But no matter how often he tried to shake himself back into reality, how many times he sternly told himself to pull it together, how many promises he made himself that _today_ would be the day that he shoved it all aside and rejoined the world that he had abandoned, it never happened. Nothing mattered. Not when you were a useless old army doctor with an imaginary war wound.

Or, he _had_ been an army doctor with an imaginary war wound until exactly one week ago. Up until then, he had needed that blasted cane to do so much as take a few steps, overcome with a twisting mass of pain that had no source and yet still left him gasping and staggering for any form of support to keep from collapsing. It was infuriating, that he should be so hindered by an injury that was nothing more than his imagination getting the better of him, and yet there was nothing he could do about it. Even his therapist seemed utterly stumped by his leg’s stubborn resistance to any and all treatment, and John had begun to give up hope that he would ever be able to walk again, ever be anything but a useless old relic left limping while the world passed him by.

Until he had met Sherlock. Until he had thrown caution to the winds for a night of mindless insanity. Until he had become so wrapped up in excitement and anticipation and dangerous pleasure that his leg had been the last thing on his mind and the limp had vanished like fog in the morning sun.

Until he had been brought roaring, trembling, gasping back to life by the only person who had ever seen him as he truly was.

But even still. No matter how he longed for another night with that man, no matter how he yearned to lose himself and forget his troubles for just one more evening, he should not. The first night had been dangerous enough, another would be asking for disaster. What if he were caught? What if people found out? He would be a laughingstock, certainly, or possibly worse. What hope would he have of rejoining the world then?

He shouldn’t call.

-

“Yes?”

“Um, hello. Is this – is this Sherlock?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well. Hello. This is, this is John. From the other night?”

“John who?”

“Right, um, I’m John Watson? We…we spent the night together last week? You gave me your phone number –“

“Obviously, or you wouldn’t have been able to call me.”

“Yeah, obviously. Well you gave me your number in case I wanted to…to see you again. And I was hoping, well I was thinking that –“

“You want to purchase my services again.”

“Yes.”

“I can be there in an hour, is that sufficient?”

“So soon? Well, I suppose that’ll work…”

( _click_ )

-

Half an hour. He still had half an hour. Could time really be moving this slowly?

John paced up and down the narrow confines of his flat like a caged animal. Ten steps up, turn, ten steps back. No pause, no rest, nothing but mindless pacing that would soon wear a groove in the carpet with his endless footsteps. He had already straightened up the flat, mentally berating himself as he did so, and there were only so many times that you could re-make a bed that was so perfectly in line with military standards that he could surely bounce a penny off of it. Everything was in place, everything was in order, and he still had half an hour to wait. John was afraid that he might go insane.

_Why am I doing this? Why did I ever think this was a good idea?_

That was the question he kept circling back to in fevered delirium, the question that kept eating away at him with nagging persistence as he paced restlessly back and forth. What on earth had ever possessed him to repeat this insanity? But even as he asked the question of himself again and again, repeating it in increasing desperation as his footsteps grew more and more hurried, he knew that the answer was of course contained in the pacing itself. His steps, no matter how frantic rushed they grew with every crossing of the tiny room, were as firm and steady as anyone could hope for with not a trace of hesitation before each foot was planted.

He couldn’t give this up, not now. No matter how his brain screamed at him that he was an idiot, a fool, a danger to himself for going through with this, he simply could not give up the rush of life and energy surging through him with every minute that ticked away. The rest of his life was empty, grey, utterly meaningless compared to this. What did that say of him?

John preferred not to think about it – it was easier to pace.

-

Five minutes.

Would he survive another five minutes?

_Calm down. You have to calm down._

Ten steps up, turn, pause.

_How can I be calm? This was a mistake I can’t do this oh God what is_ wrong _with me?_

Ten steps down, turn, pause.

_People do this all the time. It’s fine. It’s all…fine._

Ten steps.

Ten steps.

Ten -

The sudden knock at the door nearly sent John out of his skin. No matter that he had been counting down the seconds to exactly one hour from when he had hung up the phone, no matter that he had been waiting for this very moment, half filled with singing anticipation and half sure that it would never come – the sound of those three quiet raps startled John so badly he jumped in surprise, followed by a guilty look round the empty room to make sure that no one had noticed. With hammering heart and unshaken step, he crossed the too-short distance of what passed for a sitting room in his flat to the door in what he would absolutely never admit was a run. His mind was spinning, racing, whirling with a million questions and doubts and second guesses that were impossible to take back now.

_How did he knock? He should have buzzed to get in, how did he get past the front door? Did someone let him in? Oh no, oh no, oh God he didn’t talk to anyone did he? Do they know? Is it someone come to catch me out?_

The fears grew more and more absurd with every second that passed, every breath taken between the sound of the knocking and the click of the lock being fumbled open driving him closer to the edge of desperate panic. By the time he navigated the suddenly impossible maze of locking mechanisms and doorknobs he felt as though his heart was going to explode out of his chest, but somehow he managed finally, _finally_ , to wrench the door open and peer out into the dimness beyond.

It should have been impossible, but there he was. Looming in the persistent darkness of the hallway caused by a burnt out bulb that had not been changed since John moved in months ago, Sherlock stood quietly before John’s door. He was just as John remembered him from that night that felt a lifetime ago, when he had appeared in the smoke and darkness of a London street corner like a vision from another world. Pale, impossibly pale face framed by the upturn of a dramatic coat collar. Cheeks just this side of gaunt, skin stretched tight over cheekbones so beautiful they made John ache. And eyes, oh his eyes. Those piercing, glowing, ridiculously blue eyes that stripped John to his core and left him trembling and vulnerable and helpless beneath them. Those eyes fixed on him now, flicking up and down him in rapid motion to take in the shallowness of his breathing, the flutter of his heartbeat, the desperation of his gaze. In an instant, John was laid bare before him. And in that instant he remembered what it was to be alive.

“I – how – “ John stammered, any greeting he had been planning vanishing from his mind the moment those eyes locked on his own with laser focus and determination.

Sherlock did not answer. He did not speak a single word, only stepping forward slowly and deliberately to crowd John through the doorway and back into his flat while never once breaking his gaze. The door swung shut behind him, definite in its finality, and they were alone in John’s flat with nothing but silence between them.

“Sherlock,” John whispered, the name a plea and a prayer on his lips as he begged for something he needed but could not name.

But even if John could not hope to articulate what he so desperately longed for with something so paltry as words, Sherlock did not need them. “Take off your clothes,” he commanded, voice hard with immutable will.

“What –“

“Take off your clothes.”

For a moment, for one brief moment of strong-headed rebellion, John considered saying no. This wasn’t the way things had worked last time, this wasn’t how John had imagined this moment at all in the long hours of nights spent awake in restless distraction. But he was pinned, caught in the piercing gaze that had not yet wavered from him for a moment, and he was left helpless to resist. Sherlock was staring into the heart of him, stripping away the walls and the bravado and the stubborn resistance he had built around himself for protection and defense and leaving nothing behind. There was no way that John could resist even if he wanted to, and there was absolutely no question of that now. John would do whatever Sherlock asked of him, as long as he continued to look at him like he were the most fascinating thing in the entire world.

Hypnotized by Sherlock’s gaze, John reached up to the buttons of his shirt with slow and steady fingers, hardly daring to draw breath in the silence and the tension that crackled with electricity between them. One by one, button after button fell open with no protest until the shirt slid to the floor with a sigh of rumpled fabric, disregarded and forgotten. John hesitated, hands hovering over his belt buckle, unsure how far Sherlock intended this to go before he took action himself, but Sherlock continued to stare at him with eyes shining brightly in the gloom, fully clothed still and radiating authority as John could not have imagined. The message was clear.

Slowly, carefully, with a gentle _clink_ and a rasp of worn leather, the belt was undone and trousers fell to join his shirt in a graceless pile on the floor. There was only a moment of hesitation before pants followed soon after, and in the blink of an eye after John had opened the door to allow Sherlock into his flat he was standing naked in the center of the room. His head was spinning, heart thumping, breath coming shallow and uneven under Sherlock’s eyes and the feeling of overwhelming vulnerability that was breaking over him in waves. But with the discomfort, with the uncertainty, with the shame that came from being so very exposed to a man he hardly knew, the slow surge of desire that had been building for so many days was threatening to drown him with its force. John could feel himself growing hard already simply standing here under Sherlock’s inspection, not having been touched once and yet already as turned on as he could ever remember being. What was it about this man that affected him so profoundly? John could not begin to say, could not do anything but return Sherlock’s gaze like a man possessed, and pray that he would take action soon.

For his part, Sherlock continued to stare at John coolly and impassively, looking for all the world as if John’s nudity meant nothing to him. Perhaps it didn’t – perhaps all this truly meant no more to Sherlock than cash in his pocket and another fix on the horizon, with John as a passing diversion who needed his brief attention. John hoped not. Deep down, in a part of himself he did not like to address for fear of what it might mean, John knew that even after only meeting Sherlock twice in the most ridiculous of circumstances, he already hoped with a fervency that alarmed him that Sherlock did not see him as only an interesting source of income. But now, with Sherlock’s undivided attention turned firmly on him, even if that were not true John could not bring himself to care. He had Sherlock now, and in this moment that was all that mattered.

After an eternity of silent contemplation, Sherlock turned away to calmly begin removing the black coat that seemed as much a part of him as his skin. He moved with deliberate care and consideration, dragging the moment out with the slow precision of his actions and the unspoken message that came with them - _I am in charge tonight._ And on any other night John might have resisted, might have tried to reassert his dominance and regain control of the situation. But tonight, when his brain was skipping frantically on endless repeat, when he could not settle himself for a single moment, when the simple act of standing still while Sherlock removed his coat was an effort of monumental proportions, there was no question. Sherlock was in charge. And John was glad of it.

The jacket was removed, peeled off with agonizing slowness to reveal the shirt of deep purple beneath that clung to him so closely it may as well have not existed in the first place. Where the shirt he had worn in their last encounter had been loose and worn with age, this one was fitted to him like a second skin to reveal every line and muscle beneath and send John’s pulse racing ever higher. Paired with the skin-tight jeans that John remembered so vividly, Sherlock was no longer a man but a walking obscenity. He was an advertisement for sin, a brazen announcement of the debauched pleasure he promised to those who could afford him and braved what he had to offer. And as he bent over slowly, painfully slowly to lay his coat across the seat of John’s chair, he cast a glance back to where John stood transfixed that promised all of that and more if John played his part.

There was no questioning that now. There was nothing in the entire world that would cause John to move a muscle until Sherlock ordered him to, nothing left in the universe besides watching the shift of muscles on that thin frame and waiting with breathless anticipation and painful arousal for the next order to come his way. Inner turmoil, restless anticipation, circling doubts all fell away in the face of Sherlock and the wordless promise of what was to come.

Still fully clothed and already driving John mad with desire, Sherlock paced across the room to close the distance between them, coming so tantalizingly close as to set John’s every nerve ending alight with the nearness of him. He could smell the bite of cigarettes, the tang of sweat, the musk of sex and lust and God only knew what else that should have repelled him with its vulgarity and did no such thing whatsoever. Sherlock smelled primal, rich with life, and oh so very fuckable. John nearly buckled, nearly reached out to grab the man not six inches away from him and throw him down onto the bed to take what he so desperately wanted. But the last remnants of his self-control held him still despite the screaming of his desire, sternly allowing him to let go of control for tonight and allow whatever was to happen to simply _happen_.

Sherlock circled around him slowly, looking John up and down in minute observation, taking in every square inch of him in obsessive focus and intimate detail. John had never felt so exposed, so open, so bare before another human being as Sherlock pulled him apart with his eyes to leave him empty and trembling in their wake. By the time he came back around again John was shaking under his scrutiny, alive with anticipation and the strain of holding himself still as he was observed and cataloged piece by intimate piece. But his effort was rewarded, made so very worthwhile as Sherlock’s eyes dragged up him slowly to meet John’s own and were lit up by the briefest of flickering smiles, ephemeral and fleeting and utterly wicked.

“Let’s begin.”

A hand came up to make searing contact with John’s chest, a caress and a direction in one to propel him backwards with no notice. John stumbled over his own feet, losing all sense of direction and solidity at the force under the sudden contact, but the bed swam up to greet him as he landed in a graceless heap under Sherlock’s looming shadow. Before he could catch his breath there were hands in contact with him once again, stealing the very air from his lungs with their touch and leaving him gasping and desperate beneath them. The world was reduced to skin on skin, the contact made between hands and body, the desperation for more even as nerves were set afire with sensation. Lips soon followed, pressing kisses and bites and caresses in the wake of exploring fingers until John was writhing and senseless with his need.

His moans were swallowed by lips and tongue, ruthless and searching on his own. Sherlock was relentless, unceasing in his attentions, kissing John with unyielding force to drive him mad. John was losing himself in Sherlock, losing every ounce of himself as Sherlock ran his hands endlessly over his skin with delicate and exacting caresses. Now fingers were dancing over his nipples, swirling and rubbing and pinching to make him buck and gasp against Sherlock’s lips, now those hands were brushing ever lower as teeth were set to the delicate skin of his neck to wring a moan of pleasure from him. Too much, it was nearly too much for John to handle, and he could not get enough of it.

“Oh, _God_ ,” he gasped to the ceiling, eyes gone wide and staring at the sensation of a firm hand wrapped around his cock to give him the relief he needed so desperately. This was amazing, this was _better_ than amazing, this was everything he needed without even realizing that he did. He thrust erratically in time with Sherlock’s strokes, reduced to mindless desire and gratification. But when he felt himself already drawing close, already coming near the edge he did not want to cross, he knew even as he raced onwards that this was too much, too soon. He didn’t want this to end yet, didn’t want Sherlock to vanish into the night to leave him alone with his thoughts once more, didn’t want to face the emptiness with only this brief bout of pleasure that was not nearly enough.

“Sherlock,” he gasped, breathless and choking on his own desire. There was no response, only an increase in the pace of Sherlock’s stroking, causing John’s eyes to roll backwards with a moan. “Sherlock, God, _Sherlock_ , please. Please, oh, God please not like this. I want, I want –“

He trailed off, lost, but the movement of Sherlock’s hand slowed and stilled, and when John opened his eyes he gasped to see Sherlock’s eyes fixed with laser intensity on his own. To have their full attention was enthralling, and the picture of Sherlock bent over him, still fully clothed with face flushed and hand wrapped around his cock was enough to knock the wind from John entirely. Was there anything so lovely as the way Sherlock looked now? John thought not.

“What do you want John?” he asked gruffly, voice a low and gravelly rumble that pierced John to his core.

“You. I want you.”

Time blurred. John could not be sure how Sherlock removed his clothing with such inhuman speed while still keeping his hands busy in their dance over John’s body, nor did he care to wonder how a man so fragile in appearance could possess such strength to man-handle him up the bed with apparent ease. His brain was occupied with far more pressing things than wondering or thinking, far more caught up in the burning touch of Sherlock’s fingers that had slipped down, down, _down_ to make him gasp and arch and squirm in frantic pleasure. Sherlock remained ruthless in his attentions, not pausing for even a moment to let John catch his breath as those fingers teased and danced, over and around, in and out, eliciting gasps and whimpers that John could not quite believe were his own. He could never remember feeling this way before, hell he could hardly remember anything at all right now besides how it felt to have Sherlock undoing him piece by piece.

A crinkle of plastic, a slight pause, swiftly followed by a shock of cold and searing contact that had John arching himself right off the bed in his surprise and pleasure. Sherlock’s fingers were teasing no longer, instead moving deftly and with a purpose that could only mean one thing. The moments seemed to blur together once more, John losing himself utterly as his world narrowed down to nothing but the increasing fullness inside of him as Sherlock readied him with ruthless efficiency. Ruthless it truly was, ceaseless and persistent and so demanding that John could hardly breathe at the onslaught of sensation, and that was exactly how John wanted it. He did not want to think, did not want to go slow and steady and careful – tonight he wanted to forget himself entirely in the pleasure that Sherlock gave him, even if it was fast and hard and rough. And somehow that ridiculous, wonderful man had seen that all in the blink of an eye and was giving him exactly what he needed.

Soon John could do nothing but pant out short, shallow gasps and try desperately to hold himself together.  But just when he thought he could take no more of Sherlock’s damnably clever fingers they were removed, and the emptiness they left behind caused him to cry out a wordless protest at their departure. Breaking his gaze from the ceiling for the first time since Sherlock had begun, John looked down the bed and lost his breath entirely. The sight of Sherlock, naked and bare and nearly glowing in the dim evening light, stretched out over him with eyes gone dark and cheeks flushed, oh it was John’s undoing. He was like a creature from another world, a creature of sin and pleasure and fantasies fulfilled, something that should not exist and yet was made real in elegant perfection. And yet when Sherlock caught John’s gaze and held it fiercely, moving slowly up the bed to fill the emptiness that his fingers had left, he was more real than anything John could imagine.

There were no words, this time. No cries, no shouts, no curses to pierce the evening air. There was nothing but the rhythmic creaking of a bed too small for them both, their labored breaths in the silence, and the occasional gasp when it all became too much. And not once, not one time as they moved together in increasing speed and urgency, did they break the gaze that they shared. John stared into Sherlock’s eyes as though he were held there by some unbreakable tether, as though if he were to look anywhere but into the blue eyes that had become the center of his universe it would all fall away from him in an instant.

The pace increased. Even without speaking they knew what the other wanted, although truthfully it was Sherlock who knew what John wanted and gave it to him without needing to ask. John could do little more than cling to Sherlock in desperation and try to hold himself together, although that was a task that was becoming increasingly difficult with every thrust. He was slipping, losing his control, and it would only be a matter of time until he lost himself entirely. God, he didn’t want this to end, not ever, but the end was looming towards him ruthless and inescapable all the same.

But before he could say a word to beg Sherlock to slow his pace or to warn him of the inevitable, there was a hand working its way between them to grasp at his painfully hard and leaking cock. John nearly fell to pieces right there, nearly ended it all with an undignified cry at the first contact, but Sherlock held him steady with eyes and touch and presence alone as he began to stroke with agonizing slowness. It was unbearable, impossible to endure, an overwhelming onslaught of sensation that only grew with every stroke and thrust. It was close, so close now, and then…

Not breaking eye contact for a moment, Sherlock brought himself so close that their foreheads were nearly touching, and with a voice gone hoarse and rasping whispered one word.

“Now.”

John’s vision went black. Whether his eyes had rolled into the back of his head with the force of the orgasm that ripped through him or perhaps he simply lost his sight for a moment he could not begin to say, nor did he particularly care to. His world shuddered at the very foundations as he arched with a wordless cry of desperation and fulfillment. He shook, he trembled, he _ached_ with the pleasure that coursed through him in wave after wave, and even as he came down from it shaky and boneless and complete like he had never known the aftershocks still rippled through him with relentless persistence.

And even as he twitched and spasmed and reassembled himself Sherlock was still moving, still pushing onward towards a final finish of his own that he had not yet reached. He looked half mad from it, no longer human in his frantic need, until at last with a gasp and a shudder that seemed to tear him in two he stilled completely. They froze there together like that, sweating and panting and exhausted and yet still not ready to pull apart and collapse into a tangle of limbs. The stillness only lasted a moment, a quiet span of seconds when they breathed in unison and stayed joined together after the deed was finished, but it was a moment that John treasured no matter how brief.

But it could not last, and seconds later Sherlock was pulling himself out of John and vaulting off the bed as though he had somewhere he desperately needed to be right that instant. It wasn’t a surprise, not really, but that did not mean that John was not ever so slightly disappointed that their time was already over and that Sherlock would likely be out the door and vanishing into the night once more in five minutes or less. But even still he would savor this moment while he still could, and the warmth and happiness and easy contentment that were still flooding through him meant that he could do just that with ease.

Reaching over the edge of the bed to fish around for something to clean himself off with, John looked over towards where Sherlock was getting dressed with brisk efficiency. “Thank you.”

Sherlock paused in the buttoning of his shirt and looked across the room at John, eyes narrowed in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know, you really should learn to take a compliment” John answered with a chuckle before standing up to fetch his clothing. “I said thank you. For that, for knowing exactly what I needed without me even having to ask. I don’t even know how you did, but thanks.”

The suspicious uncertainty left Sherlock’s face, replaced with a scornful smirk that suited it far better. “It wasn’t exactly a mystery, believe me. One look at you and the way you were nearly vibrating with tension and uncertainty, and I could see that you needed to be distracted. It’s a compulsion I have some familiarity with myself.”

“Yeah well, it was still bloody brilliant. You’re a damn miracle worker, is what you are.”

“Hardly,” Sherlock scoffed, but John still caught the hint of a satisfied smirk that flitted briefly over his face at the compliment. “Like I told you before, my job is to please people. I’m simply better at it than most.”

Silence fell as Sherlock pulled on his coat, and unsure of what else to say John resorted to asking a question that he already knew the answer to because he did not know how to approach what he truly wanted to ask. “Are you going back out for the evening?”

“Yes. There are several more hours of business left.”

“Right, of course. Right. I figured as much.” He hesitated, unsure of how to begin, before taking a fortifying breath and asking as steadily as he could manage, “Sherlock, can I ask you something? Is it possible, I mean…would you be willing to do this again? As in, regularly? Every week, maybe?”

Sherlock looked at him blankly, not changing his expression in the slightest. “You wish to see me once a week?”

“I – yes. Yes I do,” John answered, face flushing in embarrassment.

“Does the same price suit you?”

“Yes.”

“This time next week it is then. Good evening, John.” And with that brief farewell and not another word said about the business deal they had just negotiated, Sherlock left the flat and vanished onto the streets of London once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I know it's been quite a while since this story was published, and even though I originally intended for this to be a separate sequel the story was still very much a continuation of the original instead of something new. But anyway, I hope you enjoy having more of the story - expect at least four more chapters (possibly a few more), and a good deal more plot to come! Thanks for sticking with it!


	3. Chapter 3

What the combined medical forces of the RMC and the attentions of a therapist who came both highly qualified and recommended had not been able to fix in several months, Sherlock Holmes solved in two weeks.

Gone were the limp and the cane that John had needed to take more than three steps without collapsing under the pain shooting through him, relegated to his memory and the closet where he firmly hoped he never need see them again. Gone was the lingering malaise, the sensation of drowning in himself and suffocating slowly as the world looked on as he slowly began to rejoin society bit by gradual bit. Gone was the desperation, the frantic restlessness, the feeling of disconnect from everyone and everything, replaced by renewed vigor and energy and even, dare he say it, happiness. Sherlock had brought John back to life.

His therapist was floored. She was a professional through and through, but even still she struggled to hide her amazement at the progress that John had made in so short a time and seemingly with no catalyst to signal the change. Where before he had sat sullen and closed in on himself, facing her across the room like an adversary daring her to test his defenses, he now sat relaxed and comfortable, answering her questions with jokes and far more honesty than he had ever yet shown. When she attempted to ask him what had caused this miraculous recovery however, approaching the subject with all the delicacy of a woman who spoke to hurting and broken people for a living, she simply earned an enigmatic smile in response. Newfound honesty aside, this was a subject he refused to discuss no matter how she cajoled him or insisted that it was better to share his feelings than keep them bottled up inside him.

What was he to tell her though? Later that afternoon, sitting in his flat and scrolling through job listings with fresh determination, John wondered to himself in passing just what Dr. Thompson’s response would have been if he had told her the true reason for his turnaround.

_Well you see Doctor, I wasn’t suffering from PTSD like you were so sure that I was, I just needed to do something absolutely insane to feel alive again. So like any sane person would I went out and picked up a prostitute from the street and now I have sex with him once a week. Does wonders for the constitution._

The look of pure horror that he imagined on her face was enough to make him laugh aloud even as he crawled his way through page after page of fruitless job postings. Now that he had discovered that he did in fact want to be part of the world that was spinning around him again, and now that he was able to walk and stand without shooting pains in his leg, John was determined to find a job to get him out of the flat. Weekly diversions aside, there was very little that John had to look forward to during his days, and the stifling boredom of being cooped up in his flat at all times would certainly drive him mad faster than the creeping ennui he had managed to stave off. Besides, the pension the army gave him was a pittance at best, and if John wanted to continue living in London and to continue the weekly extravagance that kept him sane, he would need another source of income for himself.

The jarring absurdity of his situation nearly made John feel as though he were not living his life but instead playacting, living a double life that was straight out of a bad movie or ridiculous television program. After all, who in their right mind was able to turn their life around because of their relationship – if indeed it could be called that – with a prostitute? That was the sort of thing that didn’t even happen in cheesy movies, the sort of thing that when John sat down to examine the ridiculous twists and turns his life had taken recently he could not quite believe was actually happening to him. And yet, he could not imagine anything else. The adrenaline, the thrill, the feeling of being so _alive_ when he was with Sherlock was something he would not trade for anything now, and the fact that it had granted him the peace of mind he so desperately needed to begin changing his life was an unexpected gift.

And after all, John reflected as he clicked on a link that led to a nearby clinic in need of a part-time doctor with a triumphant grin, did the means of motivation really matter if the results were a success?

-

Today had been a good day, and for once it was not to do with any illicit services. No, today had been… _ordinary_ , and yet John could not keep himself from smiling with satisfaction as he stretched in his office chair at the end of it. The sun was shining outside in a rare bit of good weather, his patients had been surprisingly pleasant, and today was Thursday which meant that he was both one day away from a weekend and two days away from his favorite night of the week. A wicked grin that he was glad no one was around to see stole over his face at the thought, a shiver running through him in excitement and anticipation. No matter how many times he saw Sherlock, no matter what they did during their time together, John always looked forward to his Saturday nights more than anything else.

And it wasn’t just the sex that John was looking forward to, despite what he so diligently tried to tell himself to the contrary. The sex was wonderful, _more_ than wonderful in fact, so much so that even the memory of lips and hands and moans was enough to send a flush over his face and cause him to shift uncomfortably in his chair. It took all of John’s willpower not to think back on his evening activities while he was in public or, heaven forbid, with a patient, because while such memories were delightful they were distractions he could not afford.

But now, when the day was over, the last patient had finally left the office, and John had a blessed moment of privacy to himself, it couldn’t hurt _that_ badly to allow his mind to wander just the tiniest bit. No, it wouldn’t hurt at all to recall the vision of Sherlock stretched out beneath him, impossibly long lengths of pale skin stretched out with head thrown back and eyes shut tight, gasping and panting in frantic motion and desire. Nor could John help but remember the electric touch of Sherlock’s hands, those hands he had grown to love so dearly with their damnably clever fingers that grabbed and flicked and twisted to drive him out of his mind with pleasure until it was him who was writhing and moaning with his need. Whatever the case, whatever John needed on any given night when the weight of memories and loneliness and unbearable restlessness were bearing down upon him, Sherlock _knew,_ and gave it to him without question.

But as delightful as those memories were, and _oh_ they certainly were delightful enough to have John squirming in his chair and covertly making adjustments in his trousers beneath the cover of his desk, they in truth did not quite compare to the other memories of Sherlock that had begun to join them. Because in recent weeks, so gradually that John had missed it at first and only now was beginning to see the shift, things had begun to change between them. The surface remained the same: Sherlock would arrive at exactly eleven, entering John’s building without being buzzed in through methods he still would not reveal, and after only a few moments of greeting or acknowledgement they would begin. They clung to each other like men drowning, whether kissing or moving straight into headier activities, focusing only on touch, sensation, and each other with single-minded focus. They became lost in each other, lost in the desire to forget themselves for even the briefest periods of time, lost in the giving and sharing of pleasure and the blissful emptiness that came with it.

Afterwards however, when they were damp and wrung out and sated with their exertions, that was where things had begun to change ever so slightly. Their first night together, and indeed in many that followed, Sherlock had leapt out of bed nearly the moment that they were finished, taking only a moment while he was redressing himself to pluck the envelope full of cash that John left discretely on the desk before racing back out onto the street immediately, hardly giving his sweat time to dry before he was fully dressed and in search of another client for the evening. And John had understood – that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t a touch disappointed of course, but he knew that Sherlock needed to earn a living and lounging around with him after the deed was done would not help him do that in any way. But bit by bit, as weeks passed and they became more acquainted and comfortable with each other, Sherlock had begun to linger.

At first it was for a few moments only, pausing to rest on the bed as his heart rate returned to normal before jumping up to pull on his clothing. Then, trading a few words with John in the silence of a room that felt ever so slightly barren and empty after their moans and cries had fled. Soon, he was no longer out the door less than five minutes after they had finished, instead sitting on the edge of the bed or even lying down, staring at the ceiling and sharing quiet conversation. John had no idea what was prompting Sherlock to stay, why he was choosing to remain with John after his obligation had been carried out and his fee had been earned, but he was not going to question it. Every moment spent with Sherlock felt like a gift, and it was not one he would toss aside lightly.

And then, last week, a miracle. It had been raining, the sort of torrential downpour that blanketed the city in a curtain of water to wash away anyone foolish enough to set a single foot out of doors. Sherlock had been blown in on the first breath of the storm, crystalline droplets clinging to black curls and pooling gently in the worn folds of the coat he was never without. He was trembling, drenched to the bone, made vulnerable and delicate and human instead of a creature of ice and iron-clad control. And he was beautiful.

They had not fucked hard and fast that night, had not taken possession and dominance of each other in a bid to forget the demons that chased them, had not tried to lose themselves with every cry and thrust. John had seen Sherlock standing there wet and shaking, eyes wide in his pale face, hair dripping in steady rhythm, and known that they could do no such thing that night. And so he had peeled off the sopping coat with delicate tenderness, removed the soaked clothing to leave kisses in its wake, had pulled Sherlock into bed to warm him through with his breath and his body until not a trace of the cold remained. Something had changed that night that John could not define and was not sure that he wanted to, something that frightened him even as it sent a thrill racing through him at the mere memory of that night spent in intimate quietness with the rain lashing fiercely at the windows. And when they were through, when Sherlock had been brought back into the world of the living, he had not fled. He had remained in John’s narrow bed, holding himself as carefully apart from John as he could manage in the limited space while still soaking in the warmth of bare skin against his own and resting in the quiet as the rain continued to pour down in relentless torrents, apparently in no hurry to leave the shelter of the flat to return to the streets once more.

John was astonished. Sherlock had never stayed this long before, had never even remained lying in bed with him longer than a few minutes to collect himself before he began the process of reassembling the armor he wore with such determination. What should he say? Should he say anything at all? Was this a moment of silence that would be shattered beyond repair if he were to breach it, or was there something that Sherlock wanted? John could not say and did not dare ruin the fragility of the quiet with anything so vulgar as speech. It was better to simply sit in the peace brought by happy tiredness and flooding hormones, and to enjoy it while he could.

At long last though, so quietly that his words were nearly lost in the patter of the rain at the window, Sherlock spoke. “You amaze me sometimes, John.”

That was _certainly_ not what John had been expecting to hear, if he truly had been expecting anything at all. “What? I amaze _you_?” he asked.

“In your own way, yes,” Sherlock answered with a small smile. John could not tell whether or not his words were serious, or if perhaps this was an example of the excessively dry and biting humor that he got such rare glimpses of. After a brief silence however Sherlock turned his face towards him and asked, “Do you know you’re the only repeat customer I’ve ever had who hasn’t asked me horribly invasive questions about my life?”

John blinked, taken totally aback. “I, uh, really? The only one?”

“Indeed.” Sherlock looked away from John again, folding his arms behind his head as he spoke up towards the ceiling. “Normally by the third encounter people feel as though they’ve somehow earned the right to know me better, as though their money buys them more than just sex. Questions are the least of it of course, but that’s how it always starts.” He frowned slightly. “Needless to say I do not return to those clients.”

“Right. Well, I wouldn’t do that, of course. I mean, you don’t know that, but I wouldn’t. Ever. I understand how this works.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows twitched upwards slightly, although he remained studiously examining every minute crack in the ceiling above their heads. “Aren’t you curious?”

“I suppose I am, but like you said I’m just a customer. You don’t owe me anything, so it’s fine.” He paused briefly, then smiled at the ridiculous thought that had just flitted through his brain. “Besides, not knowing means I can guess all _sorts_ of interesting things about you.”

Sherlock snorted, clearly unimpressed with the notion of John making any sorts of guesses about him or his past.

“Oh what, you don’t think I can guess things about you too?” John asked, reaching over to poke Sherlock in the side gently.

An admonishing glare answered him, along with a dryly sardonic, “Hardly.”

John was nothing if not up for a challenge, especially one offered with such obvious disdain, and so he sat up as best he could in the narrow bed to situate himself more steadily. “Well I know that you have a posh background, for one thing.” Sherlock look surprised, and John grinned to himself to know that he was off to a good start. “It’s the way you talk, you moron. You’re obviously brilliant, but you talk like you walked straight out of some ridiculously upper crust university and it’s not just an affectation. Plus there’s your coat – it’s beautiful, or it used to be, and I don’t even want to think about what it cost when it was new. Either you bought it yourself or someone with money gave it to you, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the sort of thing a client would give you…family, maybe? How did I do?”

A brief silence followed in which Sherlock looked over at him in mild surprise – and perhaps even a touch of admiration that John hoped he was not imagining. It didn’t last long however, and soon enough the usual sarcastic disdain was firmly back in place. “Not bad, considering. I mean, you hardly scratched the surface of course and missed all the obvious clues that even an idiot could see, but not bad.”

“You are such a berk,” John said with no venom at all, shaking his head ruefully. “Fine then, what did I miss, Mr. Clever?”

“You _were_ right about the coat – it was a gift from my mother, before she died. She always did have excellent taste, and the means to go with it. And I did go to university, although that was more of a lucky guess than anything on your part as I have always spoken this way and I did not stay at university long enough for it to have that much impact on me. Not that it could have of course, it was so dreadfully dull that I doubt I would have learned anything even if I had stayed the full time. But you entirely missed that my long-term cocaine use is partially what spurred my departure from university, as well as the many attempts at rehabilitation by my _tremendously_ irritating brother Mycroft, and I don’t think you would have ever come close guessing at my brief time as a detective. Pathetic attempt of it, really.”

John blinked, unsure that he had caught that last bit correctly in the rapid-fire torrent of information that had just been flung at him. “A detective? You…solved crimes?”

“Try not to hurt yourself in your astonishment, but yes,” Sherlock said scathingly, very carefully looking anywhere but at John. “As I said, it was a brief stint, but after I was able to solve a crime that had the police stumped by spending only five minutes on the scene while, in the Detective Inspector’s colorful language, “as high as a fucking kite”, they were willing to take me on. It was interesting, for a while, but the demands and restrictions placed on me were too much after a time and I left. I work better on my own.”

_You mean they wanted you to be sober and you couldn’t manage it. A brilliant mind like yours, doing something good and now…God do you even realize how far over your head you’ve gotten?_

John felt as though he were seeing Sherlock for the first time, as though after all of their meetings, encounters, whatever they chose to call them, he was at last seeing a glimpse of the true Sherlock who lay beneath the tight clothes and barbed tongue. He did not know what had prompted this unexpected honesty, but in that moment of clarity he knew two things with a sudden and painful surety that nearly frightened him: Sherlock Holmes was the most brilliant man that John had ever met, and John was developing feelings for him that extended far beyond any pretensions of mere business.

In the silence that followed, John had felt his world shift ever so slightly under his feet. He did not know how to go forward, how to handle a relationship that had spiraled so quickly out of his control. But with a small start he realized that the sudden silence was not just due to his awkward uncertainty. Looking over at the window John saw with a pang that droplets were no longer being thrown against it with shattering force, winds were no longer whipping past, and temporary calm had once again restored itself to the streets of London.

“The rain has stopped,” he said quietly, hating himself for it.

“A stunning observation,” Sherlock answered, the usual sarcasm gone from his quiet words.

“Are you going to go back out? Tonight, I mean?”

As though the question were the impetus he had been waiting for, Sherlock sat up and launched himself out of bed like a shot. The familiar routine asserted itself, clothing donned in rapid-fire succession until at last Sherlock the man had been replaced by Sherlock the product, Sherlock the property for sale to the highest bidder, clad in a uniform of sin and a coat of armored protection. “Street business declines an average of 67% in rain, and even more so in a downpour like this one, but it is likely still worth the effort. One never knows who will be out on a night like this.”

John hesitated, unsure if it was his place to say, but worry drove him onward with no regard for the consequences. “Sherlock, be careful, yeah? Out there, I mean. Like you said, you never know who’ll be out on a night like tonight, so just…be careful.”

Sherlock was already halfway to the door, mind clearly on the task ahead of him as he pocketed an envelope full of cash that they both pretended not to notice, but nevertheless he had still paused to turn back and look at John briefly. And what John saw in that moment had brought his heart to his throat and sent a thrill of warmth down his spine, because in that brief pause Sherlock had sent him the only genuine smile that John had yet seen, warm instead of caustic and far more tender than any of the biting smirks he so loved. “I always am.”

He had vanished into the night like a phantom, disappearing from John’s life as he always did to leave peace and turmoil in his wake. John had lain awake for hours that evening, staring fixedly at the same three cracks in his ceiling and wondering just what the hell he had signed himself up for and if there was any possibility of going back now that he’d started.

There wasn’t, of course. There was no chance at all of stopping what he had started that night nearly two months ago when he had set out in a cab full of hope and fear and with no idea whatsoever what he would find in the London darkness. And John would not want to turn aside even if he could, not now that he had turned his life back around and found some measure of happiness – even if it was in purchased form that he could not tell a soul about for fear of what would come after. And even though his happiness was built on shaky ground, was crafted from false pretenses and empty promises that he paid to hear, it made no difference to the tangible changes it had done for John. And it certainly made no difference to the feelings that he was so diligently working to ignore with every passing day.

The brief foray into territory that was best left unexplored spurred John to shake his head in an effort to clear the cobwebs out, bringing him back into the present moment and the fact that he had been staring into space for a solid ten minutes at least. Thankfully no one had yet stuck their head in his office to check that he was still breathing, but it was only a matter of time before one of his well-meaning colleagues noticed that it had been a bit too long since he had made any signs of life and came into see what was up. And with the memories of Sherlock and skin and rain so fresh in his mind, that was certainly not what he wanted at the moment. No, as much as John enjoyed the company of his coworkers – especially when they were pretty, intelligent, and inclined to flirt with him – this was not an afternoon that he wanted to spend making pleasant small talk or politely listening to stories about precocious children.

As enjoyable as Thursdays were, as much as he loved the feeling of delightful anticipation that came with knowing what was in store for him soon, there was no denying that a certain measure of frantic, nervous energy came along with it. It had been too many days since his last encounter with Sherlock, so long that the desperation was beginning to creep back in at the edges of his mind, and sitting here in idleness was doing nothing to alleviate it. No, if he wanted to distract himself from the inevitable Thursday anxiety that only made Saturdays all the sweeter, he needed to do something with himself before he went mad. Thankfully he had seen his last patient of the day and the paperwork he had left could be put off until tomorrow with no severe repercussions, so it would do no real damage if he cut out a touch early instead of hanging around for the rest of the afternoon.

Feeling very much like a schoolboy sneaking out of class early and praying the teachers wouldn’t see, John straightened up his desk and gathered his coat to edge his way quietly out of the office. By yet another stroke of luck that he could not quite believe he met no colleagues in the hallway and was not intercepted on his way out through reception, and before he could stop and worry that he would be delayed in his escape he found himself standing in the meager sunshine on the sidewalk with an afternoon of freedom ahead of him and countless opportunities for distraction.

What should he do with himself this afternoon? A walk was a possibility, as was a trip to the grocery store that he rather desperately needed, but those were only temporary diversions that would do nothing but lead him back to the empty silence of his flat to fret away his afternoon and night. But even as he stood enjoying the sunshine and wondering what he could do to fill his time, the answer came to him. From the depths of his memory came the dim recollection of a rugby match taking place this evening, and his question was answered. A night at the pub with a good match on the telly – that was exactly what he needed to while the hours away in pleasurable solitude. He might even enjoy it. With a grin he turned on his heel to head down the sidewalk towards the pub he preferred, ready for an afternoon of beer and shouting on his team to victory.

Until, that is, not even five steps towards his destination an enormous black sedan pulled to a sudden stop next to him. That the car was meant for him was obvious – it had been racing down the crowded street with dangerous speed and purpose until it roared to a stop immediately next to John, and the door that was flung open an instant later confirmed that fact entirely. Stepping back in surprise, John immediately felt his entire body tense into a defensive stance as two enormous men in impeccably tailored suits who resembled boulders more than people stepped from the car, sunglasses over their eyes and terrifying determination written in every line of their bodies.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Watson,” the man closest to John rumbled, voice calm and threatening beyond measure. “If you would please step into the car, there is someone who would like to speak with you.”

“You know, I really don’t think so,” John said as evenly as he could manage with his heart pounding in his throat, mind busy calculating every way  he could get out of this situation with his skin intact. There weren’t many.

“Please, Dr. Watson,” the other, even larger man said. “We don’t want to make a fuss, so it would be best for everyone if you got into the car.”

_Two men, twice my size. Possibly more in the car. Potentially armed, status unknown. Unknown vehicle, unknown destination, unknown purpose. Definitely a trap._

“Sorry boys, I don’t make a habit of getting into cars with strangers even when they ask nicely. Now if you don’t mind I have somewhere I need to be.”

“It’s really for the best if you listen to us, Dr. Watson,” the closer man said smoothly, and John’s heart froze when he shifted deliberately to reveal the outline of a gun holster underneath his suit jacket. “Refusing will only make a scene, and there might be…accidents.”

The bustling activity of the sidewalk crashed back down around John in sudden and damning enormity, the laughter of children across the street mingling with the conversation of two old ladies who were entering the clinic behind him. Could he escape these men? Quite probably, if he were quick enough and able to recall the army training that hopefully had not left him yet. But would he be able to escape them without having any innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire? No, that was not a risk that John was willing to take. Not here.

Squaring his shoulders, John looked up to look the man closer to him full in the face with not a trace of fear. Summoning the battle courage that had not yet disappeared in the tranquility of civilian life, he said with iron-clad evenness, “Fine, I’ll get in your bloody car. But you make one move I don’t like, and I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen.”

The man nodded, then stepped aside to gesture at the open door. “Fair enough. After you, Dr. Watson.”

The car ride was endured in utter silence. John had no desire to speak with the giant of a man seated next to him, not with the undeniable threat that hung in the tiny space of the car and the tension that was singing through John and growing with every minute that passed. He was far too busy watching every movement of the man next to him out of the corner of his eye, too busy trying to peer through the darkened windows of the car to track their journey, too busy attempting to plan an escape for himself the moment that an opportunity was presented. But when it became obvious that the circuitous route they were taking through the city would be impossible for him to chart, and the minutes stretched out endless and unbearable, John looked over at the man and risked one question.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll tell me where we’re going?”

There was no answer. John may as well have not spoken in the first place for all the reaction he got, and so with a shrug he turned back to the window to keep up his fruitless attempt to discern where they were headed. Finally, an eternity later when John was so thoroughly lost that he could not hope to find himself on any map, their journey slowed as they made their way through a network of desolate and empty warehouses. John had never seen anywhere like this in the city before, and the barrenness and desolation of the place only served to cement how very powerless and alone he was in this situation. It was not a feeling that he enjoyed one bit, and slowly simmering anger was building inside of him along with his fear.

The car rolled to a stop just inside the open doors of a warehouse indistinguishable from the rest, and when not a single word was spoken and not another action taken John realized that this was his command to exit the vehicle. His uneasiness, already as high as he could remember it being since the reconnaissance mission that had turned out to be a trap, climbed ever higher as he stepped out of the car to see the dark recesses of an unlit warehouse. His footsteps on the barren concrete echoed hugely in the vastness of the place, and the very silence into which the sound reverberated told John just how isolated a location he had been driven to. Tension climbed ever higher the further he walked into the darkness, exposure, risk, and open vulnerability grating on every survival instinct he possessed. There could be anything lurking in the spaces he could not see, and even as John scanned his periphery in a familiar motion that did nothing to calm his nerves.

_Stay calm, Watson. If they wanted you dead, you’d have been taken down with one shot by now._

Finally, midway into the warehouse that seemed to have no end, a figure swam into view out of the shadows. John nearly stopped in his tracks in his surprise to see a lone man leaning with perfect calm on an elegant umbrella that jarred oddly with the sunny day outside, but his momentum kept him moving forward until he was a careful six feet from the stranger. He was very nearly the last sort of person John had been expecting to see – truthfully he did not know what he _had_ been expecting, but an elegantly suited man a few years older than himself who looked for all the world like a successful banker was not it. But as John looked at the man who was smiling at him with unreadable neutrality, John began to revise his initial assessment of harmlessness significantly in the other direction. The man held himself with absolute control, his pose of deliberate nonchalance in such an unusual situation a deliberate message for the man that had been kidnapped and brought before him like a penitential supplicant. Whoever this man was, whatever he wanted from John, he was in control.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Watson.” The man’s voice was just as surprising as his appearance, pleasant and posh and yet tinged with a sarcastic disdain that set John’s teeth immediately on edge.

On any other day, John might have been willing to engage in a verbal dance with this man, to rise to the challenge that lay in his words, but not today. Not after he had been man-handled into a car and driven to an unknown location for God only knew what purpose. Planting his feet firmly, John clenched his fists for strength and asked, “What the hell is going on?”

Elegant and possibly manicured eyebrows rose in brief surprise, or perhaps amusement. “Ah, straight to the point as ever, I see. I’m afraid your bedside manner could use some work - is there not a need for polite conversation in your profession?”

“Listen mate, I don’t know who the fuck you are or what sort of game you’re playing with me right now, but it’ll be better for everyone if you either tell me what’s going on or let me walk away right now.”

Eyebrows flicked upwards once again, and when the man spoke again his tone had gone even more dryly sardonic, a feat that John had not thought possible. “Mmm, apparently not. You are, of course, free to leave at any time you wish. I wouldn’t dream of holding you here against your will, I simply brought you here for a little chat about something of mutual concern to us –“

“Bollocks,” John interrupted, already sick of this conversation and the deliberate, absurd obfuscation of it all. “You sodding kidnapped me – picked me right off the street in broad daylight without so much as a how do you do and brought me to this warehouse in the middle of nowhere with no way out. Is it so no one can hear me scream? A touch melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“Please, let’s keep the conversation reasonable, shall we? As I was saying, I want to discuss something with you that concerns us both, something I think you will be quite interested in and may even be of…profit to you.”

The man’s expression remained unchanged, a mask of bland, unfeeling geniality that John did not believe for an instant. He reached slowly and deliberately for the breast pocket of his jacket, a motion that was all too familiar to John and one that caused him to become keenly aware of his own helpless vulnerability even as he tense in instinctual reaction. But it was not a gun or indeed a weapon of any kind that came from the pocket of the stranger’s elegantly tailored and undoubtedly expensive suit, but instead a slim notebook that was flipped open with a small quirk of a humorless smile.

“Let’s see here…ah yes” he began calmly. “John H. Watson, MD, recently returned from army service in Afghanistan after receiving a medical discharge due to injuries sustained in action. A bullet wound to the shoulder, it says here, although there was extensive damage to your leg as well, a circumstance that could not be explained by either your medical team or the psychiatrist you so grudgingly visited. Quite the pretty little mystery, especially as here you are standing before me without any help of a cane whatsoever. Astonishing.”

The man paused to look John up and down, the barest hint of a smirk appearing for a moment before vanishing again. John’s heart was in his throat, his pulse roaring in his ears as the private details of his life were laid bare by a man he had never met, but he was damned if he was going to let the bastard see the effect he was having. John had survived worse, far worse than some maniac who had wormed his way into John’s past and he would not give the bastard the response he was so clearly looking for. Let him read from his little notebook – John would hear it all and not move a single muscle.

The quiet turning of a page was the only sound in a warehouse that echoed the silence back at them. “Things seemed to turn around for you a little over two months ago, although your psychiatrist is quite at a loss for what the sudden change could have been. You still refuse to open up to her, and yet you suddenly found that your leg was working beautifully and that you were even able to hold down a part time job at a local clinic. Quite the miraculous recovery, and all under your own power – or so it seems.” He paused, looking up to meet John’s eye. “But I think we both know that’s not _quite_ true, don’t we?”

“What are you playing at?” John asked quietly, suddenly afraid that he knew all too well where this all was headed.

The pleasant mask that the man had worn throughout their conversation so far vanished, replaced with cold determination that would have made a lesser man than John draw back in fear. “You know exactly what I’m playing at. Two months ago, almost to the day, you went out and purchased yourself a prostitute from the street, a male prostitute who just so happens to be strongly addicted to cocaine, and you have been seeing him ever since. For whatever reason your damaged psyche has concocted for itself, this “treatment” has allowed you to resume your normal life despite the staggering moral implications of enabling the habit of a man who so clearly needs help for his addiction. I wonder, _Dr._ Watson, what your colleagues would say if they knew about your weekend activities? How would the little old ladies you treat during the day react if they were to find out that you go home at night to have sex with a man who could by any standards be termed a coke whore?”

“Fuck you,” John spat, seeing red and not caring one bit that he was shaking with the rage that had overtaken him. “I don’t know what you want from me, or who the fuck you think you are that you can stand on your high horse and try blackmail me with all this shit, but you can go fuck right off. I have nothing to apologize for, and certainly not to a coward like you.”

“Is that so?” the man hissed, and there was no mistaking the cold fury in his voice or the anger in the rigidity of his posture. “Nothing to apologize for? Nothing at all? You do not feel the _slightest_ bit of guilt for providing the means to buy the cocaine that is killing my little brother?”

“Your little… _you’re_ Mycroft?” John spluttered, taken so aback he nearly fainted. _This_ was the Mycroft he had heard Sherlock write off with casual disdain as a useless, interfering idiot? Well John could certainly understand the “interfering” bit now, but useless was never a word that he would associate with Mycroft Holmes ever again.

“Indeed,” Mycroft said quietly, having regained his composure somewhat and withdrawn once more behind his shell of pleasant indifference. “Sherlock is my brother, and now perhaps you will believe me when I say that this is a matter that is of personal concern to us both. Perhaps you might even concede the fact that it is of slightly _more_ concern to me, as this is an issue I have been handling for the last ten years at least. And now, Dr. Watson, the question is this: how much will it take for you to stop seeing Sherlock?”

John blinked, quite positive that he had misheard the question in his attempts to keep up with the twists and turns of this conversation. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“How much money will you require to stop seeing Sherlock on a regular basis?” Mycroft asked calmly, not batting an eye as he negotiated the price of his brother’s life. “The sums that I am willing to provide are most generous, enough to get you out of that appalling flatshare the army has provided and possibly even enough to find you some newer, better entertainment as well. Someone of more repute, someone less likely to embarrass a man of your standing.”

This – this was quite possibly the most surreal conversation that John had ever had in his entire life. He shook his head slightly, trying to work through what he had heard in his own mind even as he began speaking slowly. “Wait, let me get this straight. You, Sherlock’s older brother, are willing to _pay_ me money in order to stop seeing him and find someone else.” He paused, then huffed out a short laugh of disbelief. “No, wait sorry, it’s even better than that – you want to _bribe_ me with enough money that I will stop seeing him, and you’re willing to blackmail me with threats about my job and my livelihood to do it.”

“Yes,” Mycroft replied with perfect calm.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Mycroft blinked, momentarily surprised by John’s angry question. “You think you can just pick me up off the street in front of my job, whisk me off to some warehouse and try to intimidate me with all this information you have on me, and you think I’ll just take money from you after that? Do you really think I’m that spineless?”

“I think you’re a man of principle Dr. Watson, and I had hoped you would consider my offer seriously as such.”

John pointed an accusing finger at Mycroft’s chest, anger overtaking sense. “No, you hoped that I would be so scared of you and this whole show you put on that I would cave, take the money, and run. And that means you know nothing about me at all. I’m not scared of you, Mycroft, not one bit. Sherlock is a grown man, and so am I, and we are both capable of making our own choices without you playing puppetmaster in the background.”

“I am trying to save my brother’s life!” Mycroft’s shout rang through the empty spaces of the warehouse, glancing off cold concrete and metal walls to echo the desperation and anger back to the two men squared off against each other in confrontation. A moment of stunned silence followed, in which Mycroft composed himself to continue more calmly, “All I am doing, all I have ever done is try to protect him. That he doesn’t want my help is clear, but that does not excuse me from my duty. It’s my job to look out for Sherlock, a job that I have so far failed at spectacularly. But that does not mean I am going to stop trying, and right now _you_ , John Watson, are standing in the way of that. Before you, he did not always have the funds to buy his drugs and his habit was irregular at best. Now, he has a steady cash flow, and therefore a steady supply that will eventually kill him. I cannot allow that.”

Gaze met gaze, iron wills meeting and clashing in the silence that rang with their determination. John stood firm in the face of Mycroft’s anger, refusing to wilt or back down in the slightest. He would not be bullied like this, he would not be intimidated and shoved around instead of being spoken to like a reasonable adult. If Mycroft wanted to play games with him, wanted to use fear and emotional manipulation to get what he wanted, that was fine. John was nothing if not stubborn.

As the silence continued with no answer from John, Mycroft sighed slightly and asked in resignation, “Will you stop seeing Sherlock?”

“No.”

Another sigh, this time of sadness that John staunchly refused to be affected by. “I suspected as much. Well then, I’m afraid there is not much more for us to say to each other. The car you arrived in will take you anywhere you would like to go, if you wish.”

There was not a chance in hell that John was going to willingly get into any car that Mycroft offered him, no matter how far he had been taken from home. “I think I’ll walk, thanks.”

Mycroft smiled the empty smile of a politician, brittle and meaningless.  “Very well.  Have a pleasant afternoon, Dr. Watson.”

He turned on his heel and began to walk sedately into the depths of the warehouse, twirling his incongruous umbrella slowly in his hand. Just before he disappeared from sight however, he paused and turned to look back at where John was still standing watching him depart. He called back, voice muffled and warped by the swallowing distance. “And when you see my brother this weekend, it would be best if you did not mention our encounter. He does not take to news of me well.”

He began to walk once more and vanished into the shadows, leaving John alone in the emptiness of an abandoned warehouse with nothing but the turmoil of his thoughts to keep him company.


	4. Chapter 4

Friday dragged by in an agony of endless waiting, ticking clocks, and nervous checking of a watch that stubbornly refused to move any faster. John was so distracted at work that after the third patient had been forced to repeat “Dr. Watson?” with increasing irritation just to get his attention, Sarah had snapped and sent him home for the afternoon with a stern glare and an admonition to pull himself together over the weekend. Going home to his stifling flat that lacked any sort of distractions whatsoever was of course the last thing that John wanted to do when his own thoughts were threatening to drive him insane, but as there was no possible way to explain his situation to Sarah without sounding like a nutter John simply swallowed his frustration and relented. Perhaps if he took an extra long walk home through the park he would be able to find something to distract him from the worries circling in his brain like vultures, and if not at least he would be able to avoid being home for a little while longer.

While the extended detour through a park that was nowhere near close to being on the way home from the clinic was successful at keeping him out of the flat for an extra hour, a useful distraction it was not. No matter how John tried to focus on the mildly good weather, the children playing happily in the grass, or even the pretty woman who had been walking alongside him briefly and kept shooting him decidedly flirtatious looks, there was quite simply nothing that he could think about besides his encounter with Mycroft in the warehouse, along with an endless reel of every interaction he had had with Sherlock so far. It was a disastrous, never-ending cycle: a biting or scathing comment from Mycroft would slip into his mind, and like a cascade pictures of Sherlock would come tumbling after in damning confirmation. By the time John had reached his flat he was nearly at the end of his rope, and the time he spent fruitlessly searching for sleep that night would long remain one of his least favorite memories.

Saturday was no better. The time stretched out infinite before him, an eternity of empty hours that he could not possibly survive. The worries had only becoming worse, growing and multiplying in his brain until he felt as though he were drowning in a sea of doubt and indecision and rising shame.

Because, as much as John loathed to admit it, Mycroft was right. It was not a fact that John accepted lightly, nor one that he was happy to realize, but Mycroft had been absolutely right about Sherlock’s drug usage since they had begun to see each other regularly. John had not noticed at first, the change coming as gradually as the gentle shift in their relationship, but there was no denying the fact that Sherlock too had changed in the weeks that they had been meeting. He was thinner, much thinner, bones standing out sharp and painful in a body that desperately needed nourishment and was not receiving it properly. John had already thought that Sherlock was too thin when they first met, and the additional weight loss was enough to freeze him to his core with fear. And when added to the hollowness of his cheeks, the circles dark as bruises underneath his eyes, and the deadness of blue eyes that had once glowed with life, it made John nearly sick.

_How did I not see it?_

The question felt familiar, too familiar for comfort, and once again the answer was lurking simple and horrific even as John asked himself the question. He had not wanted to see. He did not want to admit that his money was what was funding Sherlock’s increased drug use, that his money was contributing to his poor health, that his money might just be the thing that killed him eventually. And so he had not seen, had not even put the pieces together when Sherlock had shown up at his flat last week trembling and vacant and unable to warm himself after being caught in a rainstorm. Sherlock was spiraling out of control, and John had missed it entirely.

The question was, of course, what to do about it now. As the day wore into evening and Sherlock’s arrival drew ever closer, John worried at the problem like an abscessed tooth as he paced ceaselessly back and forth in increasing worry and frustration. He still wanted to see Sherlock, there was no denying that fact. Even now that he knew the extent of the damage his actions had caused, he still longed for another night of wild forgetfulness with Sherlock, longed to lose himself and his troubles in empty pleasure. And the intensity with which he wanted it nearly made him ill. He was a _doctor_ , he could not simply stand by and aid the destruction of another human being, much less someone like Sherlock. But what if he were to stop seeing Sherlock, to cut off the funding for the cocaine that was doing him so much damage? Would that solve the problem, or make it worse? John did not want to think about the measures that an addict would go to in order to get another fix, and as horrific as it was it seemed somehow better for Sherlock to get it from him.

_Is that really how I’m going to justify my actions to myself? Can I really believe that?_ John wondered to himself despondently in the silence of his steadily darkening flat. It appeared so, a fact that he could not quite accept and yet could find no other alternative for. Sherlock would be arriving soon, and John could not come to any sort of decision that did not involve simply carrying on as though he had never met Mycroft, as though he had not realized what was happening to Sherlock, had not started a cycle of guilt and shame that was tearing him apart. Perhaps it might even work.

By the time eleven PM arrived and brought Sherlock’s punctual-to-the-second knock with it, John had managed to marshal enough willpower and self-control to cease his pacing and still the nervous tic that he had developed of checking his watch every thirty seconds. It was admirable, really, that he had gathered so much control over himself considering the circumstances, especially when the door swung open to reveal Sherlock leaning against the doorframe with a smirk on his face and a gleam in his eye that could have lit a small fire from twenty paces. John’s heart skipped slightly, but by the grace of something he could not name he let Sherlock into the flat without either collapsing under the weight of his own self doubt or jumping the man, something he would have thought impossible not an hour ago.

But now that Sherlock was in the somewhat more steady lighting of his flat and up close where John could see him, his uncertainty and misgivings only deepened. Now that he was looking, _really_ looking at Sherlock instead of simply being distracted by his more fascinating and entertaining qualities, there was no mistaking the fact that he had changed since John had met him. And it was not just change either – it was drastic, sudden, alarming change that made John’s breath catch in fear to see it as plain as day now.

Sherlock was no longer just thin, he was gaunt. The shadows underneath his jutting cheekbones stood out dark against paper-white skin, nearly as dark as the circles that lined eyes wide and staring and ever so slightly out of focus. Even his coat seemed to have suffered the same damage as his body, the fabric gone worn and nearly threadbare in places, and John knew without even having to see it that beneath the generous folds were collarbones jutting out far too sharp, ribs that were plainly visible even at a distance, and far more angry red injection marks peppering the insides of his arms than there ever had been before.

John did his best to hide his horror, he really did. Years of practice schooling his emotions at the side of an operating table and masking his fear as bullets whizzed past and bombs exploded had prepared him for shocks such as these, and even now when it felt as though the floor had been yanked out from underneath him John was fairly certain that he would be able to maintain some level of cultivated calm. After all, this was nothing compared to holding a patient’s life in your hands, nothing compared to having a drill instructor screaming in your face, and absolutely nothing at all when put up next to the memory of needing to take charge of a squad of terrified young soldiers on their first mission who were all looking towards him as their only salvation. John could do this

Of course, none of those situations had included a man who was uncannily, dangerously perceptive even when he was quite possibly under the influence of narcotic substances. While it took Sherlock several more seconds of looking at John and the tension he held in his hands and body to process what was happening than it normally would have, the amount of time that passed between Sherlock entering the flat and narrowing his eyes in concentration on John’s face was, quite frankly, embarrassing.

“What happened?” he asked harshly, eyes immediately going coldly inquisitive and all trace of a smile vanishing in an instant

“I – I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said with only the barest trace of hesitation, knowing even as he said it that he was already fighting a losing battle.

And indeed, Sherlock was not put off one bit by John’s pathetic attempt at prevarication. “Something’s wrong, something’s _different_. You’re not just restless, there’s something wrong, something to do with me, and you’re trying to hide it from me. Tell me what happened.”

“How do you even –“

“Nervous shifting, won’t meet my eyes, clearly been pacing, shoes at the door have unusual mud splatters from an extended walk, pencil on the desk has recent chew-marks,” Sherlock rattled off in one breath, never once breaking his gaze from John’s face nor changing the intensity of his stare one bit. “Something happened recently and you can’t stop thinking about… _Mycroft_.” Sherlock’s eyes went wide with realization, and the name was breathed out quietly as all of the pieces of the puzzle fell together – although whether it was spoken with venom or wonder John could not tell.

“How –“

There was no question of venom now, the cold fury in Sherlock’s voice almost palpable even in the midst of his distraction as he spat out, “It’s _always_ Mycroft. That _unbelievable_ – what happened? What did he say to you?” Quick as a flash, Sherlock’s attention was back on John again as he stepped in close, eyes narrowed and entire body leaning in close in an attempt to wring the information from its source even a touch faster.

John leaned back slightly, startled by the intensity of Sherlock’s reaction. “He, well, he kidnapped me for starters.”

“Typical.”

“Yeah, he picked me right off the street in front of work a few days ago, ordering me around like I’m some bloody minion he can cow with a big car and men in suits. I wasn’t pleased about that, I can tell you.” That at least earned a small twitch of the mouth from Sherlock, although it was so brief that John was half-afraid that he had imagined it. “Then he took me to some warehouse in the middle of nowhere and pulled a big mysterious act as if that’d be enough to impress me. Is he always like that?”

Sherlock was silent, John’s somewhat rhetorical question apparently having gone unnoticed. “You didn’t answer the other question. What did he say to you?”

_Damn it._ This was exactly the situation that John had been hoping to avoid – although truthfully he had been very much hoping to circumvent this entire conversation altogether, a desire that he could see now had been foolish in the first place. Sherlock had seen right through the layer of calm he had put on like a coat, and now even this small deception had fallen by the wayside as well. Attempting to salvage the situation in any way possible and knowing that he could not, John looked down at the floor and said quietly, “He…he asked me to stop seeing you.”

“No he didn’t. Mycroft doesn’t _ask_ anyone to do anything, he doesn’t know how. What did he actually say?”

The words may have been dragged out of him all unwilling, but John was nothing if not courageous under fire. Looking up, he met Sherlock’s gaze steadily and said evenly, “He told me to stop seeing you, and then when I obviously refused he offered me money.”

“How much?”

“Didn’t ask.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose slightly, his aggressive posture taken down a notch by John’s simple statement. “You weren’t curious? Mycroft is a wealthy man – he still has access to the trust fund, so I’m sure he could make it worth your while.”

“No, I didn’t ask and I don’t care how much money the tosser has I’m not taking it from him. I wouldn’t ever give him the satisfaction, especially if it means I can’t see you anymore.”

“Was that all? He just offered you money and then let you go?”

“I…” John trailed off, words dying in his throat. But he could not keep this from Sherlock, not with the way the worries that were threatening to drown him were surely written plain as day across his face. It would come out sooner or later, and John would much rather face this head on in the manner of his own choosing instead of having Sherlock discover it. With a deep breath that shuddered only slightly, he looked Sherlock square in the eye and said, “No, it’s not all. He told me that I’m killing you. That by giving you the money you use to buy cocaine, I’m responsible for what’s happening to you. For, for the way things have gotten with you recently. And…and I think he might be right.”

As John was speaking, stumbling over his words and hating himself more with every syllable, the anger and intensity had drained off of Sherlock’s face to be replaced with ice-cold indifference. It was shocking, horrifying even to watch the life drain from someone in a matter of moments, and by the time that John had come to an uncertain finish Sherlock no longer so much resembled a man as a statue with rigid posture, set face, and eyes gone distant and dead. He drew back, putting distance between himself and John and straightening to his full height to clasp his hands firmly behind his back.

“I see,” he said coldly. “So you and my brother had a nice little chat about my health without consulting me and now you can decide what’s best for me, is that it? You think that you know what’s “happening” to me and that you, you of all people can fix it?”

“Sherlock, please, I just…I’m worried about you.” John bit his tongue at the admission, but it was too late to take it back now. The situation had spiraled out of control from the moment that Sherlock had walked in the door, and all John could do now was to try and crack through the armor that Sherlock had thrown up around himself and pray that it would be enough. “I didn’t see it at first, probably because I didn’t want to, but you’ve gotten worse since we met. You’ve lost so much weight you’re practically skin and bones, you can’t focus sometimes – I can’t just stand by and watch you kill yourself with my money.”

“You can, and you will. Even if I were in any danger, something you have no idea about, you have zero responsibility or right to tell me how to live my life. None. You’re not my boyfriend, or my mother, or even my friend. You are a client, John, a customer – you give me money and I have sex with you. That is all.”

Heart pounding, hammering, breaking, John could do nothing but clench his fists and plunge forward with quiet resignation. “You need help. You need to stop using.”

Sherlock’s lip curled into an angry sneer, his face a mask of scorn and bitterness that looked nothing like the man that John had come to know. Gone was the curiosity as he picked John to pieces, the life that sparkled through him as his face flushed with pleasure, the passion that John had been able to draw out bit by bit in the dead of night when the world had shrunk to nothing more than the two of them tangled together. He was another man entirely, a creature of ice and anger and wounded pride, a man who looked at John as though he were nothing even as he pulled away from him completely.

“Or what, John?” he asked bitterly, hurt and scorn dripping from every word. “Are you going to take a page from Mycroft’s book and try to force me to change by throwing me in a cell and calling that rehab? Well, it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. I am in control of my own life and I don’t need your help or anyone else’s.”

Silence fell, final and absolute. This was not the comfortable silence that they had shared before, nor even the breathless tension that lay between them when the room was charged and laden with the potential for a hundred things, each more wonderful than the last. No, this was cold, and empty. Sherlock had pulled away from John, not just in distance, and John was afraid that he would never be able to reach him again.

With a bitter resignation that tore him to pieces with every word, John asked quietly, “So that’s it, then? That’s all there is to it? I can’t be worried about you when I can see that this is getting the better of you?”

“That’s it,” Sherlock said shortly, brusque and businesslike. “I’m in control of myself, and I always have been. Now if we’re quite through here I have somewhere I need to be. You can run along and make your report to Mycroft, I’m sure you two will have quite the time discussing my many failings.”

With a swirl of his coat and a slam of the door that rattled the entire building, Sherlock vanished. For a moment, just a brief moment only, John considered running after him, shouting down the hallway in a desperate bid to get him to return so they could work this all out. Damn propriety, damn his pride, damn what his miserable neighbors thought – Sherlock was leaving and might never come back, and John could not allow that to happen. But no, he couldn’t. He couldn’t make a fool of himself like that, he couldn’t allow Sherlock to get the better of him, he….he couldn’t. There was nothing to be done now.

Nothing but to sink into a bed narrow and cold and empty, and patiently stare at the ceiling in a futile attempt to ignore the sudden throb of pain that had returned to his leg. It was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the chapter is a bit on the short side this time, but the next one is enough of a doozy to make up for it. Promise!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning on this chapter and following for references to drug use and drug overdose.

_Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice messaging system. Please leave a message after the tone._

“This is Sherlock Holmes, leave a message.”

_Beep_

“Hi Sherlock, this is John. I know that things…didn’t go well last week, but it’s been a little while and I was just checking to make sure that everything is alright. It’s eleven thirty now and you’re usually here at eleven, so I assume that you’re not going to come by this week. And that’s fine, of course, I understand. I just want to say that, well, if you still want to keep seeing me I’d still like to see you. Even if it’s just to talk things out. Anyway, I hope that you’re well. And that…that things are ok. Anyway. Bye.”

_Click_

-

Another week had come and gone, and it was once again eleven PM on a Saturday with no sign of Sherlock. The first week had been bad enough, when John had spent each evening agonizing endlessly over every word he had spoken and each tiny reaction it had earned from Sherlock, but when that Saturday evening had produced no knock on his door and a phone call had been just as fruitless, John had truly started to worry. Was Sherlock through with him now? Would he simply vanish from John’s life without so much as a goodbye because John had dared mention that Sherlock very likely needed help for his drug use? John had hoped that it would not come to that, but when his message had not been returned and now that it appeared a second week would pass with no sign of Sherlock whatsoever it was looking terrifyingly more likely with every passing moment.

Perhaps it was better this way. As much as it pained John to admit it to himself, perhaps it really was better that Sherlock had vanished from his life like this before things had gotten even more dangerously messy than they already were. After all, John had certainly _intended_ for his evening with Sherlock to be a one-time affair, and the fact that they had gone on this long already was something that was so irresponsible that it was drastically out of character for someone as normally steadfast and upright as him. Maybe this parting, this unwilling separation was just what he needed to finally get himself out of this fantasy world he had been indulging in for far too long and return to the soberly responsible reality in which he belonged.

But even as he considered the thought, John rebelled against it instantly. No, sod that. Seeing Sherlock had been one of the best decisions he had ever made, even if it had been a stroke of luck so sporadic he did not even like to consider it. His nights with the man who made his heart race and his hands steady had allowed him to rejoin the world instead of withdrawing from it, and there was no way that he could give that up now that he had found it. And he could not give up on Sherlock, not now.

Mind made up, John found himself reaching for his phone even as his treacherous brain listed a thousand and one reasons why he should not bother calling Sherlock when the man so clearly no longer wanted to see him. It was too clingy, it was desperate, it would do nothing but drive Sherlock even further away from him than he already was. But all of those reasons could not possibly stop him from scrolling through his contacts list to find the initials S.H. that he had dared not change lest someone look through his phone and wonder who on earth could be named something so ridiculous as Sherlock. Pausing only briefly, finger hovering over the screen in the tiniest moment of hesitation, John wondered if he was making the mistake of a lifetime.

_Too late for that, Johnny boy. Mistake’s already been made, might as well take the plunge all the way._ Face set in grim determination, John selected Sherlock’s number and waited for the ring.

“I’m sorry, you the number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please redial and try again.”

John stared down at the phone in his hand in horror, not quite believing what he was hearing. But there was no mistaking the coolly mechanical voice coming from the speaker, nor the words that it was saying in such impartial tones that they turned his blood to ice. Sherlock’s phone number was no longer active. The number that Sherlock had made such a point of giving him, the number that he used to conduct so much of his business, had been disconnected sometime in the last week and now John had absolutely no way of getting hold of him.

What did that mean? A dozen possibilities flooded into John’s mind, each more horrible than the last. Sherlock could have changed his phone number after hearing John’s message, deciding that he wanted nothing to do with the customer who had gotten far too possessive. Or he could have been forced to change it by another client who actually _had_ gotten dangerously possessive. Or maybe, just maybe things really had gotten out of control with his drug use. This thought sent a chill of terror down John’s spine, far worse than the nagging fear that Sherlock’s disappearance had been caused by him. Rejection he could handle, but if something had happened to Sherlock, something that could very well have been caused by what John had said…

That decided it. Even if he had no idea what to do, John needed to _something_ other than just sit alone in his flat and worry himself to death. There had to be some way he could find Sherlock just to ensure that he really was alright, and then once that had been accomplished perhaps even some means of helping him. No matter that Sherlock apparently did not want his help, John could simply not sit by and let that man slip through his fingers and into oblivion.

It was a matter of moments before John was on his feet and pulling his jacket from its resting place on the back of his chair onto his shoulders, and only a brief second of hesitation before the army revolver he was not supposed to still have was tucked firmly into the waistband of his jeans for good measure. It was probably unnecessary, probably dangerous and stupid and a hundred other things besides, but there was no denying that he felt safer with the reassuring weight of the firearm pressed against his lower back and the knowledge that it was there should he need it. No amount of preparedness or self-assurance could quite match the confidence that came with a loaded gun close at hand and the knowledge of how to use it. Fully dressed and ready for whatever the London night had to offer him, John took one last look around the flat that was empty of the man who should have filled it with life before nodding slightly to himself and striding out into the darkness.

-

The journey out into the murky depths of London tonight with heart thundering and the sobering weight of a handgun tucked into his belt could not have been more different than that first nervous trip in a cab in search of adventure a lifetime ago. Then, John had not known what he was looking for other than something _new_ , anything to inject even the tiniest bit of color and life into a universe that had gone dead and grey. He had been lucky then, luckier than he ever could have imagined that he would be to find the man who would bring that color roaring and screaming back into his life. But now, now that he was striding out into the night certain and sure and terrified of what he would find there, John could not possibly have been less excited.

What was he even doing out here, senses as finely tuned as when he had been heading into unknown territory for a skirmish with an enemy who wanted nothing more than his destruction? What did he think he would accomplish, with nothing to go on and only a hunch that something that was even wrong? He had no idea, no idea whatsoever what he would find or if he would discover anything in the first place, but he did know that he needed to try. After not hearing a peep from Sherlock for two weeks, after the way they had parted and being summarily ignored soon after, after hearing that mechanical voice dispassionately inform him that Sherlock’s mobile was no longer in service, there was nothing else he could do tonight but go to look for the man who had saved him and see if he could return the favor.

Unfortunately, he had no idea where to even begin looking. And if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, something that galled even as he walked down the sidewalk deep in thought, he really did not know Sherlock well enough to make an educated guess. After all the time they had spent together and the closeness they had shared John had to admit to himself that he really did not know Sherlock well at all, not in any ways that truly mattered outside of the basely physical. They had shared so much intimacy, so much that John had never shared with another person before in his life, and yet John did not even know where Sherlock lived.

Well, John had to start looking somewhere. And lacking anywhere else to start, he might as well trace his steps back to that street corner where they had first met, the corner where John had seen Sherlock lurking like a creature of smoke and darkness amidst the tattered finery of others. Perhaps those others would be able to direct John now. Pausing in his determined but aimless wandering John stopped to hail himself one of the countless cabs roaming the streets for business, not even bothering to be embarrassed at the way the cab driver’s mouth twitched into a knowing grin as he gave his destination.

A restless and uncomfortable drive later, John found himself standing on the very street corner where he had first caught sight of Sherlock in the shadows leaning on a lamppost, excited and uncertain and fit to burst with the nervous arousal inside him. That lamppost was barren now, its light flickering gently in the misty gloom with no pinprick of light at the tip of Sherlock’s cigarette and no long length of human stretched out beneath it. Even though he had not really been expecting to find Sherlock standing here again after all this time John could not quite help the bitter disappointment that welled up in him sharp and sudden. He had hoped, oh how he had hoped to see the familiar silhouette lounging without a care in the world, for this all to be a simple misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a few words and a laugh and an evening of forgiveness. But of course it could never be that simple. No, the corner was barren and empty, leaving John with no idea where to go from here as his cab sped away from him into the night.

Summoning a deep breath and his courage in one, John balled his fists in determination and strode over towards the more well-lit section of pavement where a throng of people crowded displaying their wares for the passers-by. It was like entering another world entirely, leaving the ordinary behind and walking straight into another dimension where it was perfectly acceptable for men and women to catcall passing cars in the skimpiest clothes they could manage on such a chilly night. John could not quite believe that this was the turn his life had taken, searching the streets of London at midnight for a prostitute he was worried about, but there was no time to reflect on the insanity of his actions as his approach caught the attention of the woman closest to him.

She was beautiful, or had been once before time and her chosen profession had taken their toll. Her long hair was bleached bottle blonde within an inch of its life, her makeup was so caked on it was difficult to see exactly what features lay underneath the layers of eyeliner and lipstick, and the shortness of her skirt left precisely nothing to the imagination, but even still John could see that a beautiful woman lay beneath if her costume were to be stripped away. She smiled at him, aiming for coquettish and missing the mark entirely, and sauntered towards him in towering heels that made John’s feet hurt just to think about.

Before she could proposition him John cut in hastily. “I’m looking for someone,” he said bluntly, not wanting to waste time on unnecessary chit-chat.

Her smile, plastic and meaningless, grew wider and she stepped in uncomfortably close to him. “I’m sure you are love, and you found her right here. I’m just what you’re looking for.”

Stepping backward to put some distance between them, John swallowed heavily and shook his head vehemently. “No, I need to find someone in particular – his name is Sherlock, do you know him?”

“’Fraid not love, but why don’t you stay a while?” She purred, the very picture of sinful willingness. “I’m sure I can do plenty for you that Sherlock bloke can’t.”

“Sorry, I’m not interested.”

 Stepping around the woman who was now glaring at him with an angry frown, John hurried down the street to continue his search. This was already not going well at all, but he had no other idea how to proceed and so with a sigh of resignation he approached a man had absolutely no desire to speak with and who he was more than little afraid would beat him up given even the slightest provocation. The man was quite frankly enormous, hairy and muscular and more than a bit intimidating in black leather as he leaned casually against a wall and surveyed the passersby with a wary eye.

Approaching cautiously, John cleared his throat and summoned up his Captain stance to make himself appear as authoritative as possible. “Excuse me, do you know someone named Sherlock?”

“Why, who’s asking?” the man asked suspiciously, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at John with not a trace of friendliness on his face.

“I’m a…friend of his, but I haven’t seen him in a while and I’m worried about him. Do you know where he is?”

The man stared at him in silence for a moment, walled off and distrusting, before shaking his head and saying gruffly, “Sorry, can’t help ya. Not unless you wanna play.”

With a sigh, John turned away to find someone else. But before he could approach another random person and hope for the best a voice to his left asked, “You lookin' for Sherlock? That weirdo with the coat?”

Whirling around so fast he almost fell over, John looked around frantically for who had asked the question. To his surprise it was a young woman, a girl really, who looked hardly older than 18 and made John’s heart clench with her wide-eyed beauty. She did not appear jaded and hardened like many of the other women who strutted down the pavement and who eyed him so suspiciously that he may as well have been in a police uniform. She stepped in close to him, brown eyes wide with curiosity, and for the first time John let hope flare up inside him.

“Yes, I am, do you know him? Have you seen him recently?”

She shifted slightly, looking down at the pavement as she thought. “Yeah, I’ve seen him before. Fuckin' weirdo, if you ask me. He was here a couple days ago I think, but he mostly hangs out a down the road looking for trade now. Other stuff too. It’s rough there.”

John’s breath caught, fear flaring up hot and piercing in his chest. “Down the road? Can you point me there?”

She nodded and pointed down a darkened street, and before she could say another word John was off at a jog into the night. He couldn’t say what had him so terrified of what he might find or why he felt such sudden urgency to find Sherlock as quickly as he possibly could, but the fear that gripped him now was as real as anything he had ever felt and it drove him onwards with relentless force. He needed to find Sherlock _now_ , he needed to make sure that he was alive and well and not in some deadly danger that John could not even begin to imagine. Even if Sherlock laughed at him, even if he was furious that John had come to look for him, even if he never saw Sherlock again after tonight he still needed to look. He had to do this, no matter what it took.

The streets grew rougher and more intimidating the further that John ran. Streetlights were burnt out, trash littered the pavement, graffiti was plastered across every available surface, and God only knew what lurked in the darkness of alleyways. Just the thought of Sherlock coming here for trade was enough to terrify John beyond imagining, much less the thought of what else he would be seeking out in this area of the city. He slowed to a stop, panting from his exertion and earning the suspicious and wary looks of everyone who passed him. Where could he even begin looking next? He had nothing to go on but a vague direction from a young girl and the fear that was spurring him on – hardly much to go on in the vastness of London when one wanted to find a single individual.

_Well, nothing for it then. Time to do this the hard way – one street at a time._

John could not say how long he spent going from alley to alley, from street corner to street corner, working his way in a careful grid pattern to search every square centimeter of the area that could be termed "downt the road” from where he'd started. He picked the streets with a fine-toothed comb, searching out every place he could possibly imagine Sherlock could be, whether it was on the street looking for business or in a dark corner doing business of another kind. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he looked, each location that he searched bleeding together until he was no longer sure if he had already seen that one piece of graffiti before or whether he was simply losing his mind in his fear. But he staunchly refused to give up, even as the product of his determined hunting continued to be nothing more than suspicious glares and tired feet as he worked his way further away from his starting point.

But then, as his courage and his hope was beginning to flag and the first thought of giving up entered his mind, a search in a darkened alleyway turned up a miracle. He nearly missed it at first, eyes skating over the huddled lump on the ground and dismissing it as no more than a pile of trash, but when that mass shifted slightly and _groaned_ as John walked by he stopped dead in his tracks and his heart stopped right along with him. Spinning around he hurried back over to the rumpled pile of fabric that blended it so thoroughly with the darkness that John had barely even seen it.

Sure enough, as John crouched down to investigate, holding his breath for fear of what he might find, the fabric beneath his fingers was the familiar, worn black wool he knew as well as his own skin. Terrified, horrified, mumbling a prayer that would surely go unanswered, John flipped the prone figure onto his back and nearly collapsed in both relief and despair at what he saw.

It was Sherlock, and John barely recognized him. He looked like a ghost in the uncertain light of the alleyway, skin as white as paper and nearly as thin as it stretched taut and fragile over too-prominent bones. If he had been too thin before he was nearly skeletal now, and the ravages of prolonged and heavy cocaine usage were written all over him in heartbreaking clarity. An angry flush was burning in his cheeks, and when John reached down to check his pulse the heartbeat fluttering under his overheated skin was racing at a dangerous speed that made John’s own rise to meet it. He was unconscious, or very nearly so, and John’s touch did little to rouse him from his drug-induced stupor besides eliciting another moan and a quiver of dark eyelashes against white cheek.

_Oh God, oh no, please don’t have overdosed, please please please wake up shitshitshit –_

“Sherlock!” John half shouted, voice hoarse with fear. “Sherlock, come on, you need to wake up. Come on, I can’t lose you here, wake up please –“

With another groan Sherlock’s eyes opened a sliver, revealing pin-prick pupils in a sea of glassy blue that gazed at him unseeing and vacant. It wasn’t much, but the fact that he was able to regain consciousness even briefly was enough to make John’s heart leap in hope.

“Sherlock can you hear me? You need to stay awake, ok? Can you do that for me?”

He blinked slowly up at John, movements sluggish even as his heart continued to leap and race beneath John’s fingers. Thinking was clearly a struggle for him right now, much less thinking clearly, and after a moment of confused silence all that he managed to rasp out was a croaky and confused, “John?”

“Yes, Sherlock, it’s me,” he answered with a tremulous smile that threatened to break just the same as his heart. “I’m here. Hey, do you think you can stay awake for me while I call an ambulance? I need to get you to a hospital but you’ll need to stay awake for me, do you think you can manage that?”

It took a moment for John’s words to sink in, but when they did Sherlock’s eyes opened wide with fear and he shook his head limply. “No. No hospital. No.”

“What?” John asked in confusion, the need to get Sherlock to medical attention as quickly as possible to prevent the heart failure that was a very real possibility warring with his struggle to keep Sherlock’s attention. “Why no hospital?”

Another pause as Sherlock struggled to piece his words together, and when he finally did they came out slurred and labored and nothing at all like the crisply controlled speech that John knew so well. “Mycroft…Mycroft’ll find me ‘gain. Before he – he – he found me there and…no rehab. I can’t. Not again.”

“Sherlock, I _promise_ you no matter what that I won’t let Mycroft get his hands on you, but you _need_ to go to hospital, you might have overdosed and I’m not going to lose you to a stroke or respiratory failure in a fucking alley. You need a doctor.”

A flicker of what could possibly be a smile danced over Sherlock’s face, utterly out of place and incongruous - which somehow made it even more fitting considering the man who was wearing it. “S’ a good thing I got one then.”

“No, stop it,” John said fiercely, refusing to let Sherlock convince him to do anything so stupid. “Stop that right now, I’m not qualified to take care of you, not like this. It has to be a hospital.”

“John…please…” Sherlock breathed out, eyes fluttering shut and pulse jumping rapidly under the skin of his throat.

“Shit no, Sherlock stay awake, come on you have stay awake for me.” There was a brief glimmer of response, but he was deteriorating and John knew that he needed to get Sherlock out of this damned alley as soon as possible, no matter what it took. He needed to have his heart rate slowed and his temperature lowered immediately to avoid possible damage, and his blood pressure needed to be monitored carefully lest heart failure set in. If those things had to be done in the horribly inadequate confines of his flat, then so be it. “Ok, fine. Fine, we won’t go to hospital, we can go back to my flat. Ok? But listen, you show any signs of heart problems or anything like that I’m calling an ambulance, got it?”

He was talking to himself mostly, but if the sound of his voice was enough to keep Sherlock conscious then he would sing the bloody national anthem if he had to. And keeping himself talking was doing at least a little bit of good to keep him calm, and that more than anything was what was needed at the moment. If he were to give in to the panic that was scrabbling at the edges of his mind and threatening to take him over, he would hardly be able to stand much less get Sherlock home and out of the danger he was currently in. No, all he could do at the moment was compartmentalize the fear as best he could and hold himself together by will alone until he could panic in safety. It was a technique that had served him well in situations jarringly similar to this one in the desert, and just because he was lugging a mostly unconscious form through the streets of London instead of the desert sands did not mean he should act any differently.

“Alright, up you get. Come on you big lump, use those legs. I can’t carry you all the way home, not if you don’t help.”

Trying to pull Sherlock to his feet without any help from him was rather like lifting a six foot tall sack of potatoes, no matter how skinny he had become. There was a terrifying moment when John was sure that he would topple over backwards and take Sherlock down with him, but thankfully experience carrying wounded soldiers came in useful as he remembered how to properly center his weight and lift with his legs to get Sherlock moving upwards. After a moment of frantic struggle that John was profoundly grateful that no one was around to see, he was able to haul Sherlock by brute strength just far enough up that the semi-conscious man was able to get his feet under him and provide a little bit of support. With that shaky foundation laid and enough forward momentum going to take a few staggering steps, with Sherlock draped over his back and muscles already screaming in protest John began the slow and painful journey towards the street.

The next several minutes spent shambling down a dark and dingy London street were not moments in John’s life that he particularly cared to remember later on. Even though the majority of his attention was given to both keeping Sherlock upright and monitoring his labored breathing, what was left of his focus was turned towards the desperate and seemingly futile attempt to find a cab of any sort to take them back to his flat. The slow progress they had made so far was enough to tell John that they would never make it more than a few blocks like this without a cab, but apparently he had managed to find himself in the one street in all of London that was never frequented by any cabs whatsoever. At this time of the night, well into the blackest stretches of the evening when the world was quiet and the city rested just the tiniest bit, even this street was deserted and empty. The only cars that passed them sped on past to their destinations without slowing down even a fraction, and soon John began to despair that he would ever find a cab for them, much less before Sherlock’s condition got worse.

But then, approaching slowly through the gloom, John saw the most welcome sight he could possibly imagine – a black cab patrolling for customers. His heart leapt in his chest, and he halted the achingly slow progress they were making to plant his feet firmly on the pavement.

“Sherlock,” he said, praying that he was still conscious. “Sherlock, I need you to hang on to me for a second. Can you do that?”

There was no answer, but the cab was approaching fast and John had no other choice. Shifting Sherlock’s weight to his left side and trusting to luck that he wouldn’t collapse into a boneless heap on the pavement, John flung his arm upward and waved it as madly as he could manage. A heart-stopping second passed when it appeared that the cab would keep rolling right on past them, but at what felt like the very last moment possible it slowed to a stop and John nearly collapsed in relief. But he had no time to fall to pieces now, not when he had a nearly-unconscious man to bundle into a taxi, so with a groan he pulled Sherlock over to the car and flung the door open to push him inside.

“Farringdon Road please,” John gasped out as he clambered in after unceremoniously shoving Sherlock into what was very nearly a sitting position.

The cabbie looked back at them in the mirror suspiciously, eyes narrowed. “’ey there, is he alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Just had a bit too much is all.” His words were proven more than a bit doubtful as Sherlock lolled over to collapse onto John’s shoulder, a noise that was halfway between a groan and a grunt escaping from his mouth as he did so. “Just take us home please.”

“Whatever you say mate, but if he’s sick back there I’m not the one paying for it.”

“Well if you get us there fast you won’t have to worry about that, will you?” John snapped, and even though there was a grumble of protest from the front seat, the cab sped off into the night as fast as anyone with a potentially dying man on their shoulder could hope for.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for drug overdose and reference to dubious consent.

During the cab ride that seemed to last a lifetime as the lights of London flashed past the windows, there were several moments when John’s heart nearly stopped in terror. Moments when Sherlock appeared to have stopped breathing, moment when his temperature would spike or his heart rate would skyrocket, moments when John was absolutely positive that he had had made the worst mistake of his life by not just calling a damn ambulance when he had the chance. But just when he was about to give up hope, just as he was readying himself to perform CPR or shout at the driver to pull over Sherlock would stir himself fitfully back into wakefulness once more. But there was one thing that had John more worried than anything else, and that was the steady increase in Sherlock’s already rapid heartbeat that he could feel every time he went to check his pulse.

John knew that along with the hyperthermia that Sherlock was clearly already experiencing but that was treatable even in the confines of a cramped flat, tachyarrhythmias were one of the most dangerous side-effects of heavy cocaine usage and one that he was not equipped to handle at home. John needed to get Sherlock’s heart rate and blood pressure down as soon as he could possibly manage, but unlike his elevated temperature that could be handled with ice and a dose or two of paracetamol a rapidly irregular heartbeat was no easy thing to fix. There was no way, no way at all that he could do it alone. Unless…

“Wait, cabbie. I need to make a stop before we get to Farringdon.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” the driver sighed in frustration, obviously hoping that he could get rid of this potentially disastrous fare as soon as he possibly could.

But John had not patience for the man’s exasperation, not tonight. “No I’m not bloody kidding you, now go where I tell you and if you don’t say another word I’ll pay you extra for it.”

Fifteen nerve-wracking minutes later, they pulled to a stop in front of the darkened building that contained John’s clinic. _This_ was quite possibly the stupidest thing that John had ever done, and the fact that that particular list seemingly needed to be revised daily was not something that he was going to dwell on any longer than he had to. But John knew that he had no other choice left, not if he wanted to manage the arrhythmia that Sherlock was experiencing and prevent the complications were sure to follow if he did not. Just the words “heart failure” were enough to freeze John to the core in terror, but he couldn’t let that stop him now. Not when he was about to break into his place of work and steal prescription medication that would surely get him fired, if not possibly thrown in jail if he were caught.

“Stay here, and keep an eye on him,” John ordered, vaulting out of the cab before the driver could protest.

Glancing around furtively to make sure that no one was watching, John walked over to the door of the clinic as he fumbled with his keys to find the front door key he had thankfully been given last week. The thought of breaking in by force was not something that appealed to him in the slightest, but by some stroke of luck he had been deemed enough of a full-time staff member to be granted a complete set of keys just the week before. The quiet _click_ of the lock sliding open was quite possibly the most wonderful thing that John had ever heard, closely followed by the lack of alarm going off to summon the police, and with a sigh of relief and a racing heart John padded his way through the darkened clinic by memory to find where the medication was stored.

A pang of guilt ran through him as he unlocked the secure cabinet where all of the clinic’s medication was kept. _Am I doing the right thing? Stealing medication from my job to help a prostitute through his cocaine overdose? Is this really why I became a doctor?_ But even as the doubts and questions swirled through his mind, John knew he could not possibly be doing anything else. He had sworn an oath, a lifetime ago it now seemed, to heal the sick and help those who needed him, and if Sherlock was not the very definition of that need John had no idea who was. Sherlock had no one else, not if his stories of Mycroft were to be believed, and there was no way that John could ever live with himself if he left the man who had become so important to him alone and dying in a strange hospital to fall back into the clutches of his manipulative older brother.

_Cloazepam, codeine, dihydromorphine…yes, there we are._

It was the work of a moment for John to locate the bottle of diazepam, and an even shorter span of time for three of the Valium pills to find their way into his pocket. Another stab of guilty conscience made him pause as he replaced the bottle, the thought of who would get in trouble if and when the missing pills were discovered just another tallymark on his list of things that he was likely going to regret about tonight. But there was nothing for it, and hopefully only three missing pills would get lost in the shuffle of daily life at the clinic. Moving with brisk efficiency he hurried to put everything exactly back as he had found it, and after checking to make sure that he had left no traces of his presence John jogged back out to the street and the waiting cab after locking the door firmly shut behind him.

The sight of the cab still idling outside the clinic made John’s knees weak with relief, as well as the sight of Sherlock still breathing and mostly upright in the backseat as he climbed inside. The cabbie glared at him angrily in the rearview mirror, but John honestly could not bring himself to care what the man thought of him as long as he got him back to his flat while Sherlock was still breathing. After a quick check of Sherlock’s temperature (still elevated) and his pulse (still racing) John looked over at the cabbie who was still shooting him a dirty look in the mirror.

“Well? Farringdon Road, quick as you like.”

With a muttered curse the driver sped off in the direction of home, and even in spite of the worry that was clawing at him with frantic talons John found it more than a little difficult to be upset at how the sudden acceleration caused Sherlock to slump against him and lean over into his lap with a groan that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of contentment.

-

A lifetime later, when by all rights the sun should have been cresting over the rooftops of London but in truth was hours away yet, the cab at last slid to a stop in front of John’s building. The weariness that had settled on John as they wound their way through the impossible maze that called itself a city was a weight pressing down on him with unbearable pressure, but he could not afford to pause and rest even now as he was approaching home. No, now was when the real work began, now that Sherlock was off the streets and in desperate need of medical attention that only John could give. Sherlock’s nearly unconscious form resting against him was a tangible reminder of the danger that they were still in, and even though a quick check of his vitals showed that he was in fact still breathing they were nowhere close to being out of danger yet.

Throwing a wad of cash in the cabbie’s direction and profoundly not caring whether or not it was too much, John threw the door of the cab open and pulled Sherlock out with him. “Come on Sherlock, time to wake up a bit. We’re almost there, we just need to get you inside ok?”

Sherlock stirred fitfully, consciousness finally returning just enough for him to get his feet under him and onto the sidewalk pavement to keep them both from toppling over. He looked around blearily as he clung to John to keep upright, confusion and delirium burning bright in fevered eyes that contained no recognition of their surroundings whatsoever. “Where…where…”

“We’re outside my flat, about to go inside,” John said with gentle firmness. “It’s not much further, do you think you can make it all the way?”

There was a long pause while the question worked its way through Sherlock’s muddled brain, until at last he nodded mutely and allowed John to propel him forward towards the entryway of the building. Their progress down the hallway inside was tortuously slow as they were forced to stop every few steps for Sherlock to regain his balance and avoid crashing into the walls, and it took all of John’s concentration to keep them moving in the right direction. Time seemed to drag on as they stumbled slowly down the silent hall that stretched out in front of them, a darkened tunnel with no end and no respite in sight. Had it really always been this far to his flat? Could it really be such a long walk?

The sudden sound of a door opening slowly and cautiously in the deathly hush of the building set every one of John’s hair-trigger nerves completely alight. Memories of missions clearing buildings room by room and the inevitable ambushes that came with them flooded through him, and every muscle in his body tensed in response. The arm that was not wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulders groped for a rifle long missing, instinct guided his body to intercept any fire coming from the doorway behind him, and while still keeping Sherlock protected he spun as fast as he could manage with fear in his chest and death in his eyes to see tiny Mrs. Fletcher peering curiously out of her open door.

She drew back slightly at the sight of him, clutching at her dressing gown in surprise and no little fear as she saw the expression on John’s face and the seemingly unconscious man clinging to him for dear life. Stunned silence reigned in the hall for several seconds, with the half-asleep elderly woman unable to process what she was seeing and John staunchly refusing to give her the slightest hint whatsoever. Finally though, when the silence felt as though it would go on forever before either of them would budge, she cleared her throat slightly and asked in a quavering voice, “You boys alright?”

“Yes, it’s fine Mrs. Fletcher. Nothing to worry about,” John lied smoothly, hefting a slipping Sherlock upright as he did so.

“He looks in a right state, are you sure he’s alright?” she asked with concern, frowning suspiciously as Sherlock’s head lolled forward.

“Yes, he’s just had a bit too much. Seriously, we’re just fine.”

“Too much of what, I wonder-”

“Good _night_ , Mrs. Fletcher,” John interjected firmly, turning back around before she could pry any further and continuing their slow trudge down the hall. It was several seconds before the door behind them closed again, and John knew with a sinking heart that he couldn’t afford to dwell on at the moment that his cover as a respectable and honest man living quietly in this building was most likely blown for good. If he knew Mrs. Fletcher or any other little old lady like her, and he was fairly certain that he _did_ , it would only be a matter of hours before each one of her extensive circle of friends had heard every last detail of her encounter with that strange Watson fellow in the hallway. _Didn’t I tell you Edith? Didn’t I say he was no good? And then here he comes at God knows what time in the morning with a_ man _draped all over him, and unconscious too! I swear, goodness only knows what they were getting up to._

The hushed tones of deliciously scandalized old ladies echoed down the hallway after John, whispering viciously through his imagination with every step he took and every labored intake of Sherlock’s breath. Let them gossip, the old biddies, if they had nothing better to do. Until now it had been only a matter of time before they began to notice that he was not the respectable doctor he so effectively pretended to be, and if this was how his ruse was to be shattered then so be it. He had done well to avoid their attention thus far, and saving Sherlock’s life was far more important than maintaining some illusion of propriety he couldn’t really be arsed about in the first place. And as though and the resigned acceptance that came with it were the key that he had needed, the doorway of John’s flat swam into view through the darkness, and it was quite possibly the most welcoming sight that he had ever seen.

At last, at _last_ , they stumbled through the door of John’s flat in a tangle of dizzy and exhausted limbs. John’s muscles were burning with the effort of keeping Sherlock upright as a very pressing reminder of just how long it had been since he was in army shape, and it took the last of his energy and concentration not to fall into a heap the moment the door closed behind them. But as much as he wanted to collapse, fall straight asleep, and not wake up for approximately a week, he had a patient to take care of and that took immediate priority. Hauling Sherlock over to the bed, he deposited the semi-conscious form there and nearly toppled right on over after him as he did so. For one moment, one brief and breathless moment as Sherlock lay on his bed and John was overwhelmed with the enormity of what he had done this evening, he allowed the tiredness to take hold. For five seconds, no more, John breathed out a sigh that rattled his very bones and sagged in on himself in resignation.

But when the allotted five seconds were up, when the time had flitted by and the reality of the man who so desperately needed his attention was still looming large before him, John straightened himself once more and pushed the exhaustion aside. With a fortifying breath and shoulders set in determination, John donned the familiar role of doctor like the second skin that it was. There was work to be done.

First, and by far the most important, was getting the necessary medication into Sherlock before any more time elapsed. He could be made more comfortable once that goal was achieved, but the racing of his heart and his soaring temperature needed to be handled _now_ before either got any worse. Grabbing a blanket off the bed to store in the freezer for later use, John moved quickly into the kitchen area to pour the largest glass of water he could find and do a quick search for where he had the paracetamol stored. In moments he was back kneeling down by the bed to check Sherlock’s pulse that still jumped erratic and terrifyingly fast underneath his fingers.

“Sherlock, can you sit up for me? I have some medicine for you that’ll make you feel better.”

He stirred fitfully with a groan, clouded and glassy eyes opening a sliver to gaze unseeingly in John’s direction. “What are you...“

“Come on now, you just have to sit up a little to get this water down. I promise it’ll clear your head and cool you down a bit,” John said firmly, slipping his hand under Sherlock’s sweaty head to lift him up far enough to drink. It was like lifting up a limp rag doll, one both boneless and unresisting under his hands and who submitted meekly to his direction. And that was to say nothing of how very easy he was to pick up, how feather-light and insubstantial he seemed, as though he would shatter to pieces even under John’s gentle touch. John’s heart clenched to feel the proof of how he had wasted away, but he pushed away the fear and sadness as best he could to focus on the task at hand of getting Sherlock to swallow the medication.

It was a struggle just to get him conscious enough to open his mouth, but after a bit of gentle wheedling and more than a little physical direction, both the pills and a small swallow of water made it down Sherlock’s throat with a minimum of spilling. That in itself felt like a major accomplishment considering the circumstances, but there was still much to be done if John hoped to get Sherlock out of the danger he was in still. The next order of business was getting that worrying temperature of his down before any more damage was done, and that required getting him out of his clothing as soon as possible. One look at the angry flush in his cheeks and one touch of skin both sweaty and feverish, and John knew that Sherlock was edging close to brain damage if this continued much longer. Difficult as it was going to be in his current state, those clothes needed to come off immediately and replaced by a chilled blanket as soon as they were ready.

“Ok Sherlock, time to get these heavy clothes off you.” Sherlock stirred again at the sound of John’s voice, a grimace passing over his face and a small moan escaping him. “I know, I know, it’s not going to be fun, but I promise it’ll help you feel better. I’m sure you’re stifling in that coat, aren’t you?”

Propping Sherlock up in bed and leaning him forward against his chest, with gentle but firm and insistent movements John began to peel the thick wool coat from Sherlock’s shoulders and work it down his arms. This seemed to stir Sherlock from his stupor slightly, and lifting his head from where it had lolled forward on John’s shoulder he blinked as he looked around the room in confusion. “What…I don’t –“ he mumbled before turning to look at John. “Victor?”

_Victor? Who’s…ah, those would be the hallucinations then, right on schedule._

“No Sherlock, I’m not Victor. I’m John, and I’m helping you out of these clothes right now. Just hold still, it won’t take much longer.”

Sherlock’s weak protests and stirrings were not enough to stop John now that he was determined on his task, not when he had dealt with patients far more intractable, not to mention stronger than Sherlock in circumstances worse than these. Getting a coat off of a half-conscious man who had lost goodness knows how much body weight over the course of the last many weeks was nothing when compared to wrestling a soldier who was half-mad with the pain of a bullet wound and a shattered arm to the ground in the middle of a war zone. No, Sherlock may not enjoy the feeling of having his clothing taken off of him at the moment when his every nerve ending was alight and firing in rapid succession, but he would have to do a great deal more than pull feebly against John’s hands to stop it.

After a long moment of confused struggle the coat was finally pulled down off Sherlock’s terrifyingly thin shoulders and his ghost-white arms had been removed from ragged sleeves. John felt his stomach turn to see the peppering of red and fading trackmarks up and down the insides of Sherlock’s arms. The sight of those angry red marks had always repulsed him, but to see the sheer number of them now in varying stages of freshness and healing, not to mention the darkened bruise that ran around both biceps, it only added to the weight of guilt and shame that John had been carrying with him for the last two weeks. This was his fault, all of it. It was his money that had put those marks there, it was his blind greed and selfishness that had melted the flesh from Sherlock’s bones, it was his willful blindness that had reduced a beautiful and brilliant man to wreck of a thing who could not even sit up without the aid of the one who reduced him so far. The fires of guilt threatened to swallow John whole as his hands ran over the protruding bones of Sherlock’s dangerously skinny body, but with a shake of his head he pushed the crippling shame down into the same part of his mind that was housing the terror and exhaustion he could not face. Those were things to be dealt with later, not now.

When the coat was finally out of the way, John turned his attention to removing the formerly skintight jeans that no longer clung to Sherlock’s body in any way. Fumbling his weary fingers at the button there seemed to wake Sherlock more completely than anything else thus far had managed, and he struggled to sit up slightly at the feeling of the button coming undone.

“Victor?” he asked, still evidently suffering from the hallucinations that so often came with a cocaine overdose. “Victor, what are you doing?”

“Sherlock, it’s me. It’s John.” He didn’t look up from his task, the sudden addition of a wriggling patient making the previously simple task of undoing a trouser fly damn near impossible. “Just hold still for a little bit longer so I can get these off of you.”

But Sherlock was far past listening to him, or perhaps the hallucinations had become too strong for him to hear a word that John was saying, because he only began to struggle harder in an attempt to get away. “No, Victor don’t. Not now. I don’t want to, not now, not this time. Please, Victor. Don’t.”

John paused for the first time, looking up at Sherlock in confusion as he resisted John’s movements and tried to pull away as far as he could in the limited space of the small bed. Feeling as though his brain had slowed down to a crawl in the fog of his puzzlement, John tried to fumble for meaning in Sherlock’s muttered words.

_What the hell is he talking about…oh._

_Oh my God._

Understanding crashed on him like a wave, terrible and inescapable. If he had been disturbed before it was pure revulsion he was feeling now, and with churning stomach that threatened to empty completely John pulled his hands away as though he had been stung and jerked away from Sherlock so violently he almost toppled over backwards. The implications of Sherlock’s words, the horrifying meaning behind his slurred pleas, the only thing he could have possibly meant loomed large in John’s imagination, scenarios each more horrifying than the last playing through his mind without pause.

_What do I do?_

For all of his previous determination, John was stuck frozen still in horror now as he stared down at Sherlock.  The turmoil of his mind caused by Sherlock’s mumbled plea to a man from his past had stalled him entirely, and he had no idea how to proceed without making Sherlock more upset than he already was. It was clear that there were deep, painful, terrible issues to be dealt with here, issues that could reduce a man so self-possessed and assured as Sherlock to such a weakened and afraid state as this, but now was certainly not the time to do so. To be frank John was not even sure that he was the right person to address those issues at all, half afraid that he had done enough damage for a lifetime, but that was a question for another day. Now he simply could do nothing but fix the problems that he himself had caused, and do his best to fix them as painlessly as possible.

Stilling the slight tremble that had seized him and swallowing his horror, John leaned back in close to Sherlock, making sure with absolute care not to touch him in any way or to appear even the least bit threatening as he did so. “Sherlock, can you hear me?” he asked steadily, breathing out a sigh of silent relief when he was rewarded with Sherlock’s attention, however unfocused it might be. “Look at me, please. It’s me, John. I’m not Victor, and I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help, and I _promise_ that I am not going to touch you in any way you don’t want tonight. Do you understand?”

There was a long pause as fevered eyes with pinprick pupils gazed unsteadily back at John’s own. It was quite possibly one of the longest and most desperately tense moments of John’s life, but a quiet eternity later Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and he asked in confusion, “John? But I thought –“

Confused or not, John would take it. “Yes, yes it’s me. It’s been me the whole time, ok? And I swear that I’m just trying to help you right now by cooling you down. Aren’t you too hot in these clothes?”

Another long pause followed, but at long last there was a vague movement that quite possibly could have been a nod from Sherlock and a slight lessening of his defensive nervousness. “John, I, I –“ he mumbled, voice miserable and smaller than John had ever heard it.

“I know,” John said quietly, a fierce ache blooming in his chest that would certainly not be leaving him anytime soon. “But if you just let me help you you’ll feel better soon. Do you think you can do that?”

A second vague nod followed this question, and John could do nothing but take it as permission to move forward despite the bitter sadness that had seized him. There was work to be done still, and reflecting on Sherlock’s past and whatever this man named Victor had to do with it would not help either of them. With deliberately slow and cautious movements he moved his hands back down to the button of Sherlock’s jeans, and at last he was able to pull the clammy material off of fevered skin. After a moment of tortured deliberation he decided to leave the thin shirt that Sherlock was wearing on, afraid that attempting to remove it would cause more agitation and damage than leaving such a flimsy garment on would. 

It had taken far longer than he would have liked to get Sherlock undressed and unsettled him far more deeply than he had ever thought possible, but at last John was able to clear off the small bed and leave Sherlock some breathing room as he went back into the kitchen to fetch the blankets from the freezer. They were suitably chilled by now, and with hands whose steadiness belied the turbulence of his soul John lifted Sherlock to wrap the chilled fabric around him. To his immense satisfaction and with relief that made his knees weak John saw that whether by means of the paracetamol or his efforts to remove the layers of clothing the flush in Sherlock’s cheeks had visibly lessened and his skin was no longer quite so hot to the touch. It wasn’t all that much of an improvement, but at this point John would take it gladly.

The next several minutes were spent alternating between monitoring Sherlock’s vital signs and trying his best to get as much water as possible into the thin and dehydrated body slowly cooling down before him. There were several hairy moments when it appeared that all of his work would be in vain thanks to a sudden bout of nausea, but thankfully both the water and the pills stayed down and to John’s much more personal relief the cocaine-induced hallucinations did not return. It was selfish, he knew, to be so pathetically grateful that he did not have to listen to more of Sherlock’s hallucinatory ramblings, but John still could not lie to himself and say that he was not grateful. He did not know how much more pain he could bear this evening, his patience and endurance already so worn paper-thin by the night’s events that he was afraid one more revelation would have shattered them entirely. Selfish or not, he would have to save dealing with what he had already learned for another day when his courage had returned to him.

When at last the heartbeat fluttering at Sherlock’s throat had slowed to something approaching a normally elevated rhythm and the fever raging in his flesh had quieted, John was satisfied that the greatest danger was passed. He would still have to monitor Sherlock throughout the night of course, but the drugs had had their effect and he was fairly certain that he was no longer in any danger of heart failure or brain damage. Sherlock had calmed down considerably as well, passing fitfully in and out of slumber when John was not keeping him awake to continue getting water into him. At last, when the clock on John’s bedside table was blinking a sullen 4:36 into the darkness, it seemed safe to let him sleep the rest of the night. Making sure that he was turned onto his side in case of any sudden bouts of nausea, John settled into his chair to keep watch.

He had been careless once before and this was where it had gotten him. He certainly wouldn’t let it happen a second time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for side effects of drug use and withdrawal symptoms.

The grimy light of a London dawn filtered in through the curtains, grey and dismal. It was not much of a wakeup call as such things went, but the slight trickle of light through the gap in the curtains over the bed was enough to stir John from the light doze he had fallen into to wakefulness. For a few blissful seconds, a brief moment only before his brain fully restarted itself for the day, John did not remember the turbulent events that had only ended a few hours earlier. He did not remember the insane hunt through London’s streets for Sherlock, nor the terrifying cab ride home when he was sure that he would lose the man slumped over on him semi-conscious and fading, nor even the long ordeal of tending to his patient’s needs and getting him settled in for a night of recovery. No, when John first awoke hunched over and bleary in the desk chair that was certainly not meant in any way for grown men to sleep in, all he knew was the simple and agonizing pain of a back that had contorted itself into more knots than should have been physically possible.

The confusion that came with waking up in a chair was only compounded as he looked around the chaos of his flat while trying to simultaneously figure out why on earth he had thought these sleeping arrangements were a good idea and why a bomb had exploded in his flat. His previously organized home was in ruins, possessions strewn about the floor that was littered with clothing, blankets, and whatever other odds and ends had been knocked off of surfaces and pushed out of the way. And that was to say nothing of the state of his bed, no longer made to the army regulation he so strictly maintained but instead piled high with blankets and sheets that had been torn from their place, pillows mounded underneath them that shifted slightly with a sigh…

_Oh. Fuck._

It all came rushing back. The reason there were unfamiliar clothes littering the floor, the reason his body ached and eyes burned with exhaustion, the very reason he had spent the night propped up in his chair in an attempt to stay awake that failed miserably in the wee hours of the morning. Sherlock, vanished into the depths of London without a word, possibly for good. The late-night dash through the streets, searching searching searching, certain that something had gone wrong and unable to even say why. And there, in the darkness, the crumpled form of the man he had come to care for more than he was able to admit even to himself, unconscious and possibly dying and all alone. Just as he very well might be now after John had so foolishly let down his guard and broken his vigil for nothing more than a few hours of sleep.

_Oh God I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep, shit please still be breathing, God I’m such an idiot how could I-_

With pounding heart and visions of the worst outcomes possible flashing before his eyes, John threw himself out of his chair and onto the floor next to his bed to check on the patient he had neglected. He was certain that he would find a puddle of vomit and a dead or dying man there, or perhaps discover that Sherlock’s fever had returned during the night, or perhaps some other horrific complication that would be laid on his conscience because he had not been awake to treat it. But as he tore the blankets aside to find Sherlock huddled into the smallest ball that he could manage, there was no sign of any sickness or any flush remaining in his cheeks. In fact, he appeared to be sleeping as peacefully as could be expected for a man who had trod the line of a cocaine overdose the night previous, and John nearly collapsed in relief to see it.

That was not to say of course that he looked healthy. No, far from it, and as John set about checking his vital signs without the imminent threat of serious bodily harm looming large for his patient he was able to truly see for the first time just what had happened to Sherlock. His already pale skin was a greyish color that unsettled John deeply, and the cracked dryness of his lips spoke of long dehydration along with his obvious malnourishment. When that was added to the skeletal nature of his limbs and body, as well as the liberal sprinkling of injection sites that ran up and down his arms, the picture that was painted of his health was not an optimistic one. In fact, even from this cursory glance, John was able to say with some professional certainty that if Sherlock stayed on this track for much longer, his chances of surviving the year were not much above zero.

It was with that sudden burst of understanding that two things happened for John: first, he was spurred into motion to begin preparing for when Sherlock would awake, and as he did so he made what was quite possibly the most important decision that he had made in quite some time. It was not an easy decision to make, nor one that came lightly, but seeing just how far along in his addiction Sherlock truly was and knowing that it was, at least in part, his fault, made up his mind for him. It was really the only decision he _could_ make given the circumstances if he still had even a shred of ethics left. Moving about the kitchen quietly to gather a glass of water and some painkillers that Sherlock would surely need, John steeled himself for whatever was to come when Sherlock finally awoke.

When everything was gathered and ready, John settled himself back into his chair to wait. Although he would have liked to have been closer at hand to Sherlock, he knew firsthand that the experience of waking up in a strange location with very little idea what had happened to get yourself there was not an enjoyable experience for anyone. The memories of soldiers waking up in field hospitals with absolutely no memory of the incidents that landed them there and the anger and fear that followed soon after were still fresh in his mind, and for someone like Sherlock the risk was even greater. No, better to let him wake up slowly and acclimate to his surroundings before trying to intrude on his space. It would be safer that way.

At last, he began to show signs of life. Just a simple sigh at first, followed by shifting beneath his blankets, until at last a bloodshot and bleary eye cracked open to gaze unseeingly at the room beyond. After a long moment his eyes focused and he sat up in bed sharply, earning himself a hiss of pain and a pronounced flinch as a result. But the discomfort he was feeling did not deter him, and he cast about the room wildly, eyes flicking from surface to surface in rapid succession. It was clear that he was trying to piece together how exactly he had come to be here as quickly as possible, alarm and unhappiness written all over his face at the fact that he of all people could not remember. At last his eyes rested on John, and with a visible effort he calmed his unease and schooled his face into something resembling passive stillness. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it was clearly all that he could manage at the moment.

“Good morning,” John asked, keeping his voice even and calm. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Sherlock rasped, voice broken and rough.

“Are you sure? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine. I’ve been worse.”

He sat still for a moment to collect himself, running a shaky hand through his tangled, sweat-matted hair and taking in several slow and shallow breaths. But even as he sat still and concentrated on his breathing, his eyes widened in sudden surprise and panic, and what little color he had drained quickly from his face. John knew that expression well and had been waiting for just this moment, and he pointed quickly across the flat to where the bathroom door stood open and waiting. Quick as a flash Sherlock was up off the bed and dashing across the room, unsteady feet taking him as fast as they could into the bathroom where the door slammed quickly behind him. The sound of violent retching and vomiting soon followed, so prolonged and painful sounding that John ached in sympathy to hear it. He was half-tempted to follow Sherlock into the bathroom to see if he could help in any way, but experience had taught him better. If Sherlock wanted anything right now, it was most likely to be left in peace until he was finished. So John sat on his hands and waited, doing his best to ignore the sounds of misery coming from his bathroom until they ceased and were replaced by a flush and running water.

When Sherlock finally emerged from the bathroom, shaky and even more ashen than he had been when he awoke, he stumbled back over the bed and collapsed into a sitting position that looked mere inches away from being a full collapse. If he had looked bad when he first woke up he looked positively wretched now, face pale and drawn and eyes sharp with the misery he was feeling. He looked like a ghost, a wisp of a thing wasting away in nothing but a pair of briefs and a thin t shirt that was far too loose on him for comfort. Looking at him like this, swaying and shaken, battered and nearly broken, John’s resolve to help him only strengthened. The road ahead would be difficult, perhaps more difficult than anything he had done in quite some time, but he needed to try. If only for the sake of the man to whom he owed so much and who had fallen so far, he needed to try.

“Here, drink some water,” John said quietly, handing over a glass.

Sherlock took it unsteadily and began to take tiny, cautious sips to prevent it from making a sudden reappearance. But thankfully the water stayed down and there were no more mad dashes to the bathroom, and after a few minutes spent in tense and uncomfortable silence a bit of the ashy complexion began to leave Sherlock’s face. It wasn’t much of a change, but at least he looked a bit less like he was on death’s door and his skin had lost the nasty grayish tinge that had John so worried.

But only halfway through the glass of water, still looking nowhere near ready to stand for a long period of time much less attempt anything more challenging, Sherlock began to look around the room in increasing distraction. He was very determinedly looking everywhere but at John, eyes darting over the floor and the rumpled clothing that lay there, lingering slightly on the pile of coat and jeans before moving to the kitchen where the remnants of John’s hasty medical work still lingered. With every passing second he became more agitated, eyes narrowing and brows knitting, nervous tension radiating from him as he fidgeted with the glass of water he no longer touched and shifted under John’s scrutiny. Finally, with a sudden burst of energy that surely cost him dearly, he set the glass down on the nightstand with determination and began the surely agonizing process of standing up.

“I should, I should be going,” he muttered, whether to himself or to John it was impossible to tell.

“What?” John asked, certain that he could not have heard Sherlock correctly.

Sherlock was on his feet, and even though he was hardly steady there he was still upright and moving away from the bed now, determination written in every line of his body. “I’ve been here long enough, I need to go home. I can take care of myself there.”

“No, no I don’t think so. You need to stay here Sherlock, so I can take care of you. I am a doctor, remember?”

“Yes of course I remember,” Sherlock snapped, staring down at the floor with a frown and fumbling for his jeans as he did so. “And while I’m grateful that you took care of me last night I don’t need anything further. I told you that I’m fine, John. I can take care of myself.”

John rose from his seat as well, moving towards Sherlock to stop him and whatever madness had possessed him. “It’s not just getting better today, Sherlock. We need to have a serious talk about last night, about what happened, about what you’re going to do in the future. About you using so much.”

Sherlock bristled, finally looking up to meet John’s gaze with eyes that flashed bright and lively with anger. “We’ve had this discussion once before, and that was the end of it. I won’t talk about it again.”

“Yes, I think you will. Things have gotten out of hand now, so much that I can’t turn a blind eye anymore. You’ve clearly gone past the point where you can handle this yourself, you need help. And I’m both willing and able to help you with this, so I think it’s a discussion we need to have.”

“I don’t need your-“

“You OD’ed Sherlock!” John’s shout echoed through a flat that had gone suddenly silent, freezing them both in surprise at the unexpected outburst. John could feel his heart thumping in his ears, pulse racing to match the anger and frustration that he was feeling and throwing his caution to the winds. “You fucking overdosed, and if I hadn’t literally _tripped_ over you in that disgusting alley you would have died there. Do you hear me? Do you understand that?”

“Of course I do-“

“No, I don’t think you do. You seem to think you’re invincible, like no matter what happens you’ll just be able to think your way out of it and be fine, but let me be the one to tell you that you’re dead wrong. If it weren’t for me, you would have died in a puddle of your own sick, or had your fever spike and cause irreversible brain damage, or have your heart _stop_ , and no one would have even known until they found your body. So don’t you tell me that you don’t need me or my help because I don’t want to hear it.”

“I never asked for your help,” Sherlock interjected quietly, eyes narrowed and shoulders hunched defensively.

“Yeah well, it’s a bit too late for that now. I broke about fifteen ethics codes and committed at least three crimes getting you here, so you’re bloody well stuck with me now. And now that you’re stuck with me that means I’m going help you get clean, even if you don’t want me to.”

“And how exactly do you plan to enforce that, John?” Sherlock spat, retreating into spiteful sarcasm in the face of John’s determination. “I told you, you’re not my boyfriend, you have no hold over me. Do you plan on tying me to a chair until I’m better?”

But John would not be cowed by the bite of Sherlock’s words, not now. Leaning back and crossing his arms, he raised one eyebrow and said in his most determined show of nonchalance, “Oh no, nothing like that. No, if you try to leave I’m just going to pick up the phone and call Mycroft. The way I reckon, once he hears that his little brother overdosed and still won’t get help it’ll take him about fifteen minutes to come find you. After that, you’re his problem.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” Sherlock breathed, eyes burning with fury.

“Oh really?” John asked as casually as he could manage around the thundering of his heart. “I told you, you’re my responsibility now. And if the army taught me anything it’s to call in reinforcements when I have to.”

“Do you honestly think you can bluff me like that? What are you going to do, look him up in the phone book? Believe me, you can’t just call Mycroft whenever you feel like it, not if you don’t know how to get hold of him.”

“Want to test that, do you? Want to see if however long it takes me to call him is enough of a head start for you? Or don’t you remember when he kidnapped me and offered me money to stop seeing you? Well he didn’t just leave it there, trust me. Hell, maybe he knew this was coming. But whatever the reason I have his card hidden where you can’t find it, and if you leave this flat I’m going to call him right up and let him deal with you. I don’t care if he throws you in jail again, just as long as he gets you clean.”

On any other day, under any other circumstance, John knew without a doubt that Sherlock would have seen right through him. The bluff, the fabricated phone number, the flimsy threat would have disintegrated under the keen eye and unwavering surety of the most terrifyingly insightful man that John had ever met, and John’s one bargaining chip would have vanished in an instant. But today was no ordinary day, not when Sherlock was still recovering from the trauma that his body had suffered and his mind was preoccupied with the misery that he was feeling. John held his breath as Sherlock’s red-rimmed eyes bored into him, praying that his guess had been correct and that today would be the one day when he could possibly pull one over on Sherlock Holmes.

“So what’ll it be, Sherlock?”

Just when John was certain that his plan would fall to pieces, that Sherlock would see straight through his facade and that all would be ruined, with an angry sigh and burning glare he turned away from John to flop back down on the bed facing towards the wall. Furious tension and resentment radiated off of him, and after several minutes of absolute silence it became more than clear to John that he had no intention of speaking or even turning around for a good long while. Perhaps even for the rest of the day.

This was going to be more frustrating that John had anticipated.

-

The day and night that followed were, to put it simply, something akin to hell. John had some inkling of how unpleasant it would be to care for a man going through the early stages of cocaine withdrawal, having briefly studied the physiology of drug abuse and the symptoms of weaning the body off of it, but no amount of academic study could have prepared him for the reality of the situation. Because even though Sherlock had not even entered full withdrawal yet, even though his body had not even begun the painful process of detoxing itself of the chemicals that riddled it, he was still absolutely miserable. And when Sherlock Holmes was miserable, he needed to share that agony with those around him by any means possible.

John did have some sympathy, he really did. While had never personally experienced a hangover brought on by cocaine, if it was anything like the brutal hangover he’d endured in medical school the day of his biggest and most important exam when death had seemed like a truly preferable alternative to enduring another second of torment, then he gave Sherlock his full condolences for the way he was feeling. But still, even knowing that Sherlock had begun his morning with uncontrollable vomiting, that his head probably ached so badly that it felt as though it were about to split in two, that his whole body was likely wracked with pain after what it had endured last night, even so there were several moments when John nearly broke every oath he had ever sworn and just killed the sodding wanker just to get it over with.

To say that Sherlock was not taking to his involuntary rehabilitation well was more than an understatement. In fact, it would have been far more accurate to say that he was fighting the process tooth and nail with all of the formidable will that he possessed, and he was taking extra care to make John’s life as much of a living hell as he could in the process. For a start, he absolutely refused to speak to John no matter the subject, even when that subject was an attempt to see if the patient needed anything or even trying to assess his condition. He even refused to _look_ at John, instead simply lying on the bed curled into a ball of sullen anger that glared stubbornly at the wall for hours on end. When John would come over to check his vitals he refused to accommodate, even going so far as to scoot away or pull his arm out of John’s reach. He flatly refused to eat, any and all questions about food going entirely ignored, and the glass of water that had been placed next to the bed went untouched for the entire day. The message was clear: if John wanted Sherlock to get better, he was going to have to manage it with absolutely no help from the concerned party whatsoever.

Even though there were several moments when John nearly snapped, he bit his tongue and swallowed his frustration with the patience that only years of medical practice and army training could provide. Losing his temper and shouting at Sherlock would do him absolutely no good right now, and in fact it was most likely exactly what the git wanted him to do. Sherlock was only staying because John had stooped so low as to threaten the involvement of Mycroft, and John had little doubt that he was pulling the petulant child act in an attempt to end it right now. If he could get John well and truly angry enough to throw up his hands and give in before the rehab started, Sherlock could leave this whole thing behind him and get to work on finding his next fix. Well, brilliant and manipulative he may be, but Sherlock had made the catastrophic mistake of underestimating just how stubborn John Watson really was. He wasn’t the first to have been fooled by the frumpy wardrobe, small stature, and pleasant demeanor, but just as the others who had come before him Sherlock would soon learn the cost of his miscalculation. John was committed to seeing Sherlock well now, and he was not a man to give up on his decisions once they had been fixed. Sherlock was going to get clean, whether he liked it or not.

The day crawled by in frosty silence, the deathly hush of the flat punctuated only by the tapping of computer keys and the occasional rustle of paper as John worked at his desk. He needed _something_ to do to make the time move by after all, and if Sherlock was going to ignore him that at least he could use the quiet to study up on the particulars of addiction and rehabilitation that he remembered from medical school only vaguely. He trawled through article after article, poring over case studies and pharmaceutical tests and theoretical discussion, and what he learned on that long and silent afternoon chilled him to the bone. In fact as the late afternoon sun slid down the walls and left gathering shadows that pooled and dispersed in its wake, John realized that amidst the facts and figures he had taken in today there were two crucial facts that he had discovered. First, he was absolutely going to need to call into the clinic tomorrow morning and hope that pleading a dying relative would be enough to garner the sick leave he would need for the foreseeable future. And second, taking care of Sherlock was going to be one of the most difficult tasks he had ever undertaken. War included.

The difficult patient in question had somehow managed to go the entire day without moving a muscle, a feat that would have impressed John greatly if it weren’t so damned frustrating to deal with. Added to that was the fact that the glass of water near the bed was still untouched, which even in a normal patient would have been enough to make John worry, much less one that had recently recovered from a high fever and a great deal of vomiting soon after. Sherlock had to be parched, but evidently force of will alone was enough for him to push past bodily discomforts just for the purpose of spiting John. Well, that was all well and good for him, but John knew for a fact that he was going to start doing himself some serious damage if he didn’t get at least a bit of water in him soon. He’d had his tantrum for most of the day, but the time had come to face reality and deal with the harm he had done himself and his body. As unpleasant as it promised to be, John was going to have to rouse Sherlock from his stupor and try to get some water into him, if not some food if he was lucky enough.

Levering himself out of his chair with a groan and several creaking joints for the second time that day, John attempted to stretch the now-permanent knots out of his back to no avail. It would probably be weeks before his poor back returned to anything resembling normal, even longer if he continued to spend his nights propped up in that damn chair instead of in his bed as he suspected he would. Sherlock needed the bed far more than he did, and even if it weren’t wildly inappropriate for a doctor to share a bed with his patient no matter the previous relationship they had shared, John had a suspicion that Sherlock would allow no such thing. Well, not for however much longer he would be capable of allowing anything, at which point bed sharing would be out of the question anyway. No, it would be the chair for John for tonight and many nights to come, and his back would just have to pay the price.

_Suck it up Watson, you’ve bunked in worse conditions than these before. At least nothing’s blowing up this time._

Well, nothing was blowing up _currently_ , but whether that would continue to be the case remained to be seen. Approaching Sherlock where he lay on the bed with all the steady caution that was due an angry bear, John braced himself for the confrontation that was sure to come. However this ended, it certainly wasn’t going to be pretty

“Sherlock? How are you feeling?”

Just as he expected, stony silence answered him. Sherlock didn’t so much as twitch, continuing to stare at the wall with his back as an impenetrable barrier keeping John out. Well like it or not that little act was going to have to come to an end sooner rather than later.

“Sherlock, I need to check on your pulse and temperature to make sure you’re doing ok. Can you turn over here for a second please?”

Nothing. Not even a shadow of a response.

“Sherlock, come on.  I know you’re mad but we can at least be grownups about this.”

Still no answer. John may as well have been speaking to a corpse, and for a moment a bolt of panic flashed through him that something actually _had_ gone wrong during the afternoon and he had simply failed to notice. But no, closer inspection revealed that Sherlock was indeed breathing normally, if shallowly, and that he appeared to be in no distress at the moment. He was, quite simply, being a twat.

“Listen, you don’t have to be happy about this. You don’t even have to like at all, since I’m pretty sure you don’t any more if you ever did in the first place. But for God’s sake please just cooperate with me a little bit, that’s all I’m asking for here. It’ll make both our lives easier.”

There was a second, a brief, wonderful, impossible second when John thought that Sherlock might actually be considering his words. He held his breath, sending a silent prayer into the universe that perhaps, against all odds, Sherlock had decided to be reasonable and cooperate.

And then, with a sniff of obvious disdain, Sherlock scooted himself closer to the wall.

“Alright, that’s it.”

John had never lost his temper and gotten angry with a patient before, but it seemed that there really was a first time for everything. And besides, Sherlock was anything _but_ a normal patient, and John had just about had his rapidly dwindling store of tolerance stretched to the limit by his ridiculous refusal to do anything resembling cooperating. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped towards the bed with determination. “I hate to do this but if you’re going to act like a child then I’m going to treat you like a child. Come on, I need to check your heart rate.”

A brief tussle that John was profoundly grateful no one was around to see followed. To say that it was undignified in the extreme for them both was an understatement, as undignified did not even begin to cover the sight of two grown men wrestling on a bed far too small for any such activity. Limbs flew in every direction, blankets and pillows were shoved onto the floor, and more than once bony appendages found their way into a fleshy middle with a grunt of pain. The scuffle was brief but vigorous, and on any other day Sherlock’s height advantage and longer limbs would have put John in serious danger of losing, but in his current state he could only put up a minimal amount of resistance before John had him pinned to the bed. They froze there for a moment, breathing heavily from the sudden burst of exertion and each watching the other carefully to measure what their next move would be. For his part Sherlock was glaring at John furiously as he struggled against the hold on his wrists that kept him pinned on the bed, eyes full of resentful spite and frustration and a thousand other things, none of them friendly.

Pointedly ignoring the stare that he was currently receiving, John moved his thumbs over Sherlock’s wrist to take his pulse, only to sigh angrily as he felt the heartbeat there leaping in staccato time. “Great, just great. I can’t even take your damn pulse without you acting like a total prick, is that how this is going to work? Are you happy now?”

A smirk danced over Sherlock’s face, mocking and cruel. “Yes.”

“God _damn_ it you stubborn fucking idiot, why won’t you just let me help you?” John snapped, frustration taking hold.

“Help me?” Sherlock sneered, the smirk on his face turning ugly and bitter. “Is that what this is?”

“Of course I’m trying to help, so why are you pushing me away like this?”

“Do you really think you’re the first person to do this, John? To “help” me? People have tried to save me before, from the drugs, from my life, from myself. It doesn’t’ work. And do you know why? Because they always want _something_ no matter what they say, and I don’t need that kind of saving in the first place. I don’t need _you_.”

“Yeah well, you’re stuck with me for now so that’s just too bad. And no matter what anyone else has said or done to you, I don’t want anything besides for you to get better, and that’s what I’m going to do. Whether you like it or not.”

Sherlock snorted derisively, but at least some of the defensive anger had eased from his face and body as John was speaking. He was still upset, and angry with John, and furious at being kept here, but for the moment he looked a bit less like he was on the verge of punching John in the face. Taking this as a sign that he no longer needed to keep his patient pinned down for his own good, John tentatively loosened the grip he had on Sherlock’s arms and leaned back to allow him to sit up a bit.

“So can I get you to drink some water now?” he asked calmly, acting for all the world as though the wrestling match not a minute ago had not occurred. “You’ve got to be gasping by now after your fever and being sick this morning. Some paracetamol wouldn’t hurt either, you’re probably got a nasty headache from being so dehydrated.”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock insisted stubbornly, casting his eyes down as he rubbed his wrists where John had gripped them.

“Liar. Just drink the damn water, will you? I’ll even leave you alone after you do.”

There was no answer, but that was likely as close to acquiescence as John was going to get at the moment and he was going take it. Handing Sherlock the glass of water that he had ignored all day, John stood to fetch the paracetamol and was gratified when he returned to see that Sherlock was finally taking small ships while wearing an angry frown as though the water had personally affronted him in some way. He was less happy to see, however, that Sherlock’s distracted rubbing of the arm that held the glass with his free hand had turned into absentminded scratching at one of his recent, still-red injection sites that was growing redder by the second under his fingers. It was not an encouraging sign, an indicator of things to come as his cravings grew past the point where he could ignore them by force of his formidable will alone.

With a frown John handed Sherlock the pills, pulling his hand away from his arm gently to place the pills in his palm. Sherlock’s eyes followed John’s gaze down to the reddened area and he jerked his hand away as though he had been stung. The pills were swallowed and the scratching stopped, but as John kept a careful but surreptitious eye on Sherlock throughout the evening, he could not help but note the occasional twitch of hand towards arm that was quickly stifled.

-

The flat was dark when John awoke, and his heart was pounding.

A furtive rustle of movement had shaken him from the light doze he had fallen into no more than an hour ago, propped up in his chair once more and halfway in between sleeping and watchfulness as he had once been while on patrols in the desert a lifetime ago. He would have preferred to not fall asleep at all, to stay awake and stay on guard in case something should happen through the long stretches of the night as Sherlock slept off the still lingering effects of the trauma that his body and mind had suffered. It was drawing dangerously close now to the time when his cravings would become strong enough to overwhelm even his ironclad determination to ignore them – in fact they had probably entered that time already if the absentminded scratching and the dazed, far-off look in Sherlock’s eyes was anything to go by. John wanted, no _needed_ to stay vigilant in case things took a turn for the worse after Sherlock had fallen back asleep, but that did not change the fact that he too needed some form of rest no matter how brief if he was to keep functioning. It was a difficult dilemma that he had struggled with, weighing the physical need for sleep to be as capable as he could be when things turned nasty against the fear that even a moment of unguarded rest would lead to disaster. In the end he had struck the best compromise he could manage, setting himself up in his chair again to fall into the watchful doze that he had perfected while half a world away. It wasn’t much in the way of rest, but it would have to do.

Apparently even this small break in watchfulness had been too much. The sound of movements in the darkness pulled John immediately from his nap into high alert mode, every sense tuned to identifying the disturbance and neutralizing it as quickly as possible. For just a moment he felt himself pulled back to the battlefield, the sound of shouts and shots and death in his ears as he cast his eyes about the darkened flat that suddenly felt far too much like an ambush for comfort. But even as his heart thumped erratically in his chest and adrenaline flooded through him, conscious thought reasserted itself over blind panic and he reached for the light switch to his left instead of the gun in its drawer for which his right hand had been groping. This was home, this was Sherlock, and this was _not_ a war zone, no matter what his nerves might be telling him.

When the light was finally turned on the fear of raids and dying soldiers vanished, but his worry certainly did not. Because while he had been sleeping Sherlock had not only woken up but taken it upon himself to get up and get dressed in the dark, jeans pulled sloppily back on and t shirt rumpled from being slept in for so long. He was up and making his way about the flat with frantic determination, leaving clothes and items strewn in his wake as he searched desperately through drawers and cupboards, for what John could not say. He looked terrible - hair mussed and tangled, eyes wild, every line of his body wound so tightly with restless energy that he appeared ready to burst from his very skin at any moment. John felt his heart clench to see Sherlock like this, and felt a cold brush of fear curl down his spine to know just what it meant.

“What are you doing?” he asked, keeping his voice as even as he could manage so as not to startle Sherlock unduly.

But Sherlock did not so much as pause in his search, not even turning his head to look at John as he continued to rummage desperately through the closet for whatever he was looking for. His movements were hurried and uncertain, and as he pulled open another drawer in the dresser John could see that his hands were trembling slightly. “I knew you weren’t an observant man, but I never took you for this much of an idiot John. I’m clearly leaving.”

Springing up from the chair, John strode over to where Sherlock was bent over and attempted to pull him away from the dresser. “No, you’re not. We talked about this, remember? You’re going to stay here, or else I’m going to call-“

“I don’t fucking care!” Sherlock yelled, pulling away from John and spinning around to face him. He was a different man entirely than the one John had once known, different even from the one who had fallen quietly asleep not a few hours ago – he was a stranger now, with his face twisted into rage and frustration as his eyes darted frantically around the room. “I don’t give a shit what you do, I’m leaving. Now. You can’t keep me here, and that means I’m going.”

The sudden change in Sherlock was startling, but not entirely unexpected. Irritability had been bound to set in sooner or later, and when it did keeping a level head and steady nerves was the key to handling it. “Listen, I know you can be reasonable about this. You’re starting to feel the cravings and I know they’re bad but-“

“No, you don’t. You don’t know at all, and you can’t help me either. There’s only one thing that I need right now and you’re not going to let me have it, so I’m leaving. That’s all there is to it.”

Level head or no, this stubbornness was going to take a good deal of work to get around and another tactic was clearly necessary. “Sherlock, what the hell are you going to do when you get out there, huh? Do you even have any money to buy more cocaine? Do you have anywhere to go? I’m letting you stay here for free and getting you better, and it’s either this or dying on the street.”

“Oh yes, you’re so very generous,” Sherlock spat, disdainful sarcasm dripping off of every word. “Kind, generous John Watson, the giving soul who’s taken in the poor wayward prostitute out of the goodness of his heart. _Please_. I’ve seen this before, all of this, and I know what you’re really after.”

Time paused, and John’s heart stopped with it. “What I’m after? What the hell do you mean?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and a vicious smirk danced fleetingly over his face. “Come on John, in-home doctor care isn’t exactly cheap these days now is it? So what exactly are you looking to get out of this little arrangement? Some compensation paid in kind? Goods and services rendered by your grateful patient for all your hard work?”

 “I don’t…Jesus. _Jesus_ Sherlock, why the hell would you even say something like that? That’s, that’s disgusting, I can’t believe you –“

“Oh can’t you? Can’t you just see it now?” The smirk returned, mocking and cruel, and as he was speaking Sherlock began to slowly saunter closer to John in a horrifying parody of seduction. “Can’t you see me, all nice and clean and so completely in your debt? How grateful I’ll be, how much I’ll owe you for your _hard_ work and kindness, why I might just find myself trying to pay you back for it. I know you’ve been satisfied with fucking me in the past, so surely me sucking your cock free of charge will be adequate repayment –“

“Stop it,” John interrupted, backing away and feeling his stomach turn as he watched Sherlock tear his happiest memories of recent years to pieces. “God you’re going to make me sick, just stop.”

“Don’t tell me that hasn’t been your plan all along, I may be strung out but I’m not an idiot. I know how you are, customers are all the same. You pretend like you’re so much better than all the rest but deep down you just want me on my knees whenever you suits you best.”

All pretense of calm or steadiness was long gone, vanished with Sherlock’s words and the violent churning of John’s stomach. “Fuck you. After all I’ve done for you, with everything I’m going to do for you, this is what you think? God, for a genius you’re the biggest fucking idiot that I’ve ever met in my entire life, and the most self centered one too.”

“Oh really? Go on, enlighten me then. Tell me all about the real reason for you to be doing this. You have to have a reason, no matter what holier-than-all doctor act you try to pull. No one does anything without a reason, not ever, and I want to know what your brilliantly selfless justification for all this is.”

Even in the face of emotional turmoil that had shaken him so thoroughly, the desire to reach out and slap the smirk off Sherlock’s face, the need to scream and shake him and just make him _understand_ , Sherlock’s words gave him pause. He knew with sickening certainty that this _mattered_ , that perhaps more than anything his reaction in this moment was to be the moment that defined the future for them both. Sherlock had one foot out the door, and unless John wanted to resort to physical force this might well be his one chance, his last chance, his desperate last ditch effort to keep him here. The last opportunity to save his life.

Swallowing heavily around the fear that had taken him, John began slowly, choosing his words with deliberate care. “I…it’s…it’s because…”

_Because you saved me. Because you took a man with no purpose and gave him a reason to live. Because you understand my demons and have ones to match, because you don’t judge like the others would or treat me like I’m broken. Because you’re better than this, better than what you’ve done to yourself and I can’t bear to watch you disappear. Because the best man I’ve ever known is a prostitute addicted to cocaine and I can’t lose him now that I’ve found him._

_Because I…_

“I…care. About you. I know you don’t believe me, don’t believe that people care for each other, or that anyone’s ever cared for you unselfishly, but I do. I care what happens to you and I want to make sure that it’s something good. That’s why.”

The words were halting, and uncertain, and quietly spoken for fear of what they meant. But they were true, as true as anything, and John meant them with every terrified and fearless part of himself. Even if they did not yet reach the depths of the truth that he himself did not understand, they were true. And as Sherlock examined his face with wide and distrustful eyes, as he cataloged and dissected every inch of John in frantic and angry observation, his expression shifted. Perhaps it was because he saw the truth there instead of the lie he had expected, honesty written in every line and crease of John’s face and pouring from every word that he had spoken. Perhaps he was surprised by simplicity of his declaration, perhaps he had expected a trick of some kind, perhaps he had been expecting nothing at all. But whatever the reason, whatever the cause, as Sherlock gazed at John and listened to his words, the distrustful rage melted slowly from his face like the last of winter’s snow to be replaced by something else entirely.

What exactly that was, John could not say. Surprise, certainly, the kind of surprise that John had rarely seen on the face of the man who seemed to know everything about him before he even knew it himself. But there surprise was, ephemeral and fleeting, along with what John could only pray was hope. It was a foolish wish, certainly, nothing more than John projecting his own tangled feelings and jumble of emotion onto someone who did not share them, but all the same John could not help but say that he saw the briefest flash of gratified hope spark through Sherlock’s dazed eyes before vanishing once more. But whatever the truth may have been, there was no denying that the rage, the spite, the defensive anger and accusation that had filled Sherlock not moments ago was draining away and leaving in its place the man that John had come to know and care for so deeply.

“You _do_ care. Oh God, you actually do. Why?” he asked softly, whether to John or to himself it was impossible to say.

“Wish I could tell you. I haven’t the faintest bloody idea, but for whatever reason I’ve gotten myself emotionally invested in this and that’s why when I say I’m going to see you through it, I mean it.”

Breaking eye contact for the first time, Sherlock looked down at the floor and said softly, “You shouldn’t. If you had any sense at all you wouldn’t care and you’d let me leave.”

“People have called me lots of things in my life, but sensible has never been one of them. And hey, at least this bad decision isn’t going to end with a bullet in my shoulder.” It wasn’t much as attempts to lighten the mood went, but it was all that John could manage at the moment after the roller coaster of events and emotions he had dealt with in the last twenty four hours. Sherlock didn’t respond, but he wasn’t trying to escape anymore and that at least was something worth celebrating. And maybe, if John was very lucky, he might even get Sherlock to do more than not flee.

“So will you stay?”

“I…will stay,” he said slowly, carefully avoiding John’s eyes and putting up the best show of nonchalance that he could manage with hands that still shook slightly.”For tonight. It’s late even by my standards, and I don’t relish the idea of trying to find a cab home at this hour.”

John nodded, playing along with the charade no matter how ridiculous it might be. “Right, of course. Well, I don’t suppose you’re going to get back to sleep now, are you? Maybe I can get some more water in you, and even some food if you’re up to it.”

“I don’t need – how curious,” Sherlock broke off, a frown of consternation crossing his face.

“What’s curious?”

“I’m…hungry. It’s only been two days since I ate but I’m already _starving_ , that makes no sense whatsoever.”

Stifling a laugh that would have done far more harm than good, John reached over to gently steer Sherlock towards the kitchen and set him down in a chair. “Of course it does you idiot, you need food. You’re malnourished and on top of that being abnormally hungry is a common symptom of the cravings. Although for you “abnormally” hungry translates to the normal amount of food that us regular mortals eat.”

Moving about the kitchen with brisk determination, John quickly surveyed what he had at hand that he could possibly convince Sherlock to eat. Unfortunately, the pickings were rather slim. The empty fridge of a bachelor stared back at him, barren of all but the most essential of items, but even still John was fairly certain that he would be able to scrape something together for him and Sherlock to share. It wouldn’t be gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but at the very least it would get some food in Sherlock’s belly and keep them both going until tomorrow.

“How does some toast and eggs sound? I’m afraid I haven’t got much, but your stomach probably can’t handle much now anyway so that’s a good place to start. And don’t think that I can’t see you scratching yourself over there, knock it off unless you want to draw blood soon.”

There was no answer, but John was rapidly learning to take silence as an affirmative if he wanted to get anywhere in these sorts of conversations. Within moments eggs were cooking and the kettle had been turned on, and soon the tense silence that had blanketed the flat was replaced by the warm bustle of preparation. The angry shouts and sickening accusations were pushed aside with fierce determination, left for another day when feelings were not quite so brutally raw and ragged and torn by suspicious words thrown like knives. They had enough to handle now, more than enough in the struggle just to make it through the night and see another dawn together in one piece. For now, a hasty breakfast thrown together in the darkest reaches of the night was enough.

Settling down next to Sherlock with two plates and two mugs of steaming tea, John began to tuck in eagerly, the sudden stabbing emptiness of his stomach a reminder of how little he had been taking care of himself in the last night and day. Sherlock might not need to eat at regular intervals as most humans did, but John certainly could not go this long with his only meals as endless mugs of tea and the occasional biscuit. As he ate John saw with immense gratification that Sherlock too was making progress through his plate, although significantly slower as he picked and pecked at his food and took tiny sips of his tea. He seemed restless still, shifting uncomfortably in his seat every few seconds and reaching over to scratch his arm or chest far more than John would have liked, but small victories were to be cherished at this point and getting some nourishment in him took priority. The scratching, while worrying, could be dealt with after this hurdle had been overcome.

But as the meal progressed in silence, as Sherlock slowly worked his way through his food and became more and more agitated with every bite, it became apparent that that was not going to be an option. At last, as John sat torn whether or not he should reach out and stop the scratching that had become too vigorous for comfort, Sherlock ended the debate himself.

“John.”

“Hmm? Yes, what is it?”

“John, I. I don’t – I can’t –“ he stammered, more uncertain and halting than John had ever heard him.

Setting down his mug, John leaned forward with a frown of worry on his face to see what could have possibly happened so suddenly. “Sherlock, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Food and tea were long forgotten now, fork clattering to the floor as Sherlock jerked himself away from the counter and ran his hands over his body in frantic horror. He looked possessed, brushing and scratching at his clothes and body in revulsion and terror, practically vibrating with the fear that had taken him. And when he spoke at last, when he found his voice once more, it was little more than a broken whisper. “There are…bugs on me. All over me, under my clothes on my skin there are _insects_ crawling all over me and I can’t get rid of them. They’re everywhere they’re –“

“Hey woah, calm down.” Standing up from the counter himself John crossed the space between them, grabbing Sherlock’s hands to stop his desperate scratching and get a better look at what was happening. “Let me see, ok? Sherlock there aren’t any bugs on you it’s just your mind playing a trick –“

But there was no stopping Sherlock now, not when the last trace of sanity had left his eyes and hallucinations had fully taken hold. He pulled away from John, nearly squirming out of his own skin in a desperate attempt to get away from the crawling sensations in his body that he could not escape. He thrashed, he writhed, he struggled with all of his might to get away as his voice rose ever higher in terror. “They’re there, I can _see_ them John. Oh God they’re in…they’re in my skin I can feel them crawling under my skin.”

Holding on desperately to Sherlock to keep him from injuring himself, John quickly ran through what he had studied just a few short hours ago. He had known this might be coming, the hallucination that came with the crash and withdrawals commonly known as “coke bugs”, but all of his reading had not prepared him in the slightest for the terrifying reality of it. Sherlock was out of his mind, driven to madness by the inescapable sensation of bugs crawling not just on him but beneath his very skin, and by the impossibility of it that was surely more unnerving and frightening to him than anything else. Perhaps he could still be reached somehow, perhaps there was some way John could break through the fear to help his mind reassert dominance over the hallucinations that had taken it. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all he had. “Sherlock you need to breathe, and think. You know what this is, you’re just hallucinating. There aren’t any bugs, there can’t be any bugs, it’s just another side effect like you being hungry.”

It was no use. Sherlock, the brilliant man who could read other people like text on a page, the man whose startling leaps in logic and flashes of insight had so amazed John from nearly the moment they met, was gone. He had vanished, replaced by this trembling and terrified creature who could not hear reason around the treachery of his own mind. John’s words flew past him as he pulled and struggled, panting and gasping in his terror until he could do little more than repeat a plea that could not be answered. “Get them off, get them out, I can see them moving feel them moving inside, get them out get them out-“

Their brief day of rest and recovery was over. Sherlock’s withdrawals had begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest apologies for the delay in this chapter. Personal circumstances combined with a disastrous computer reboot that wiped all the progress I had made conspired to make this take much, much longer than I ever intended. Hopefully the length of the chapter helped make up for that somewhat, but I promise to try and keep that from happening again.  
> On another note, I did a fair bit of research into the realities of cocaine overdosing and withdrawals for this and the upcoming chapters, but please bear in mind that I have no personal experience with the drug and its effects (nor will I ever after reading so many descriptions of what coke bugs are like). I chose Sherlock's symptoms with deliberation and care but if you feel like I got something very wrong please let me know so that I can remedy it.


	8. Chapter 8

March 2nd [private]

Day 1

Sherlock’s finally sedated and sleeping now, but I need to keep awake to make sure that he stays that way and that nothing happens again. Writing this will help me stay up for a while, plus it’s the closest I can get to keeping a real patient file with the sort of notes I usually have. I don’t think that this is what Dr. Thompson had in mind when she told me to keep a blog, but it’s something anyway. Then again I don’t think anything I’ve done recently has been what she had in mind for me so there you go.

I do need to sleep at some point soon, since I’m fairly sure I’ve only gotten about six hours total over the last two nights, but it definitely can’t be now after how horrible the results of falling asleep were last time. Besides, I don’t think I’m going to be getting any sleep any time soon after what happened. I thought that I’d seen a lot overseas, but this was different somehow. It’s different when it’s in your own flat and there’s no actual mission to get through besides just surviving the night. I’m just glad I was able to get the Valium into him before he hurt himself any more than he already did. The scratches on his neck are pretty bad, but as long as the bugs don’t come back they should heal well enough. There’s just the one tablet left though so I’ll have to save it for an emergency or find a way to get more.

It’s been almost two hours and he’s still sleeping, so I think I might be able to grab a 30 minute nap safely. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to sleep, but it’s worth a try.

Note: Call Sarah tomorrow to beg off work for the week.

-

If the next few weeks of John Watson’s life were to be described to anyone, something he would certainly never do unless the information were being dragged out of him entirely unwilling, the word that he would most likely be forced to use would be “hell”.

Hellish was really the only way to adequately capture what it was like to rehabilitate Sherlock Holmes from the devastating cocaine addiction that had nearly killed him and yet that he still did not want to give up even in the face of all that had happened. The word didn’t quite capture everything of course, as there was likely no single word that could possibly contain the multitudes of exhaustion and fear and frustration that John endured while keeping Sherlock confined in his flat, largely by means of blackmail, a fact that was both necessary and that weighed on him deeply. The process of trying to get Sherlock clean was both the most necessary and least ethical thing that John had ever done, and that contradiction and the moral dilemmas that came with it were just a few of the things that kept him up nights while making sure that Sherlock was recovering as he should.

That first night was certainly the most dramatic way possible to start a recovery process. John still got the shudders when he remembered the wild, frenzied panic in Sherlock’s eyes as he watched imaginary roaches crawling beneath his skin, the raw terror in his voice as he begged for them to be removed, the absolute departure of anything resembling sanity in the most brilliant and analytical mind that John had ever known. It was as though Sherlock had vanished in that moment, replaced by a mindless creature of terror and absolute desperation, willing to do anything to rid himself of the pests that plagued him, up to and including tearing the invaders out of his flesh with his own bare hands.

That was what haunted him the most – the memory of Sherlock’s fingers tearing desperately at the flesh of his throat in a futile attempt to find the bugs he felt crawling there. It was as though time had slowed to a halt in those few breathless moments of horror, leaving John frozen as he watched angry red welts blossom on white skin in the space of just a few moments. He had never seen anyone in this state before, not even when he was treating soldiers who were driven mad by the pain of being shot or worse, and to see it happen to Sherlock was one of the most surreal and unbelievable things that John had ever witnessed.  Only the sight of blood beginning to well in the wounds that were growing deeper by the moment had been enough to snap John out of his stupor, and with terror surging in his chest and his heart pounding in his ears he had lunged forward to grab Sherlock’s arms and wrestle him nearly to the ground in an attempt to keep him from hurting himself any more than he already had.

It was only by the grace of stolen medicine that John had been able to get Sherlock sedated that night, a fact that John did not enjoy remembering and yet was so profoundly grateful for that it left him weak to think of it. The frenzy that Sherlock had worked himself into the in the space of a few moments was far more than John could handle alone in his flat at an ungodly hour of the morning, far more than he would have been able to handle alone even with the proper equipment to do so – if indeed there was proper equipment for restraining and calming a man so possessed of his own mind losing it. There were several long seconds, seconds that seem to stretch for hours as Sherlock pulled and struggled and writhed in John’s grip in an attempt to do _something_ about the horrendous crawling sensations he was experiencing when John quite honestly had no idea what he was going to do. It was not a pleasant feeling, nor one he was accustomed to, but for the span of several heartbeats that both thundered in his ears and yet slowed down to a crawl, John was paralyzed with the utter lack of any idea of how to help.

But thankfully, even when it seemed as though there was simply _nothing_ that John could do to get Sherlock calmed down enough that he would not be in danger of hurting himself, he had remembered the Valium. The two tiny pills that were leftover from his illicit raid on the clinic where he worked, stolen in the dead of night and sitting on his desk as recriminations and reminders of just how far he had gone down a road he never thought that he would travel. The first Valium had done its job beautifully to bring down Sherlock’s fluttering and dangerous heart rate the night before (had it really only been a day ago?), and now another could quite possibly, if John was very lucky, step in to help once more by acting as just the sedative that Sherlock needed to get through these hallucinations. It was a bit of a long shot, to tell the truth, but it was all that John had. And after all what had his life been reduced to recently but one ridiculous, absurd long shot after the other?

Getting the pill _into_ Sherlock was a struggle that was both difficult and undignified in the extreme, and frankly it was not one of the highlights of John’s life that he would care to remember later. First of course there had been the issue of simply getting hold of the pill that was sitting innocently out of arm’s reach on the desk, a thousand miles away from where the two men were locked in a struggle of wills and a tangle of limbs across the room. John had Sherlock caught up in an extremely awkward and yet still moderately effective death grip to keep him from scratching at himself again, and Sherlock was struggling with all the strength and energy born of hallucinatory terror to get free. Getting the medicine and having Sherlock take it as soon as possible was a top priority, but letting go of Sherlock for even a moment would mean that he could quite possibly do unspeakable damage to himself in whatever time it took John to dash to the desk and back.

There was only one option – if John wanted to get the pills off the desk, he was going to have to take Sherlock along with him. Under any other circumstances John would have been hard pressed to physically drag Sherlock anywhere when he did not want a part in any such thing, but the delusions that gripped him were so strong that he was unable to do anything but thrash in increasingly desperate attempts to escape John’s grip. That was all the leverage that John needed, and after an intensely undignified struggle he had managed to get them both across the room and next to the desk, leaving nothing but the unenviable task of getting the pills into the patient who was currently no longer capable of coherent speech. It took a great deal of wheedling, a bit of physical force, and no small amount of hope and prayer, but eventually in a moment of blessed clarity when the fever in Sherlock’s eyes dimmed and the sanity returned for the briefest of moments, the pills were swallowed.

At last, an eternity after this hellish night had begun with rustles in the dark and ended with frantic screams, Sherlock was poured back into bed sedated and unconscious. It had taken far longer than John would have liked for the medicine to take effect, but it had at last and it appeared for the moment at least that he would stay calm and asleep for a few precious hours. John felt as though he had been hit by a bus in more ways than one, like he had run a marathon with lead weights on every limb while being subjected to abject emotional abuse, but even still he knew that he could not sleep now. No, even if Sherlock was dead to the world for hours to come, John needed to keep watch. As penance for his mistake, to keep the nightmares at bay, to beg forgiveness for all that he had done and all that he would do, he would stay awake. Sherlock deserved that much.

-

March 5th [private]

Day 4

The bugs haven’t come back. Thank God, because I don’t know what I would have done if they had. Now I just have to hope that we’re through the worst part of the hallucinations. He’s forgotten who I am a couple times, calling me Victor and acting like we’re picking up some kind of conversation, but he snaps out of it soon enough. No clues on who Victor is, although I have some guesses. God help the bloke if I ever meet him.

The cravings got especially bad for the first time tonight. I think that he’d been feeling them all yesterday and most of today but was able to push them aside just because he wanted to, but they got the better of him finally and he cracked a bit. Even still he didn’t want me to see that it was getting to him, but there wasn’t much that he could do to hide it. It started with pacing, lots of pacing for almost an hour, and some itching that had me worried for a bit that the bugs had come back. But I think it was just a bit of paranoia setting in, along with some pretty bad anxiety. I left him alone for most of it because I could tell that trying to help would only make things worse and he seemed to calm back down after a little while.

He’s been eating a lot, way more than I think he usually does. I’m fairly sure it’s a side effect and normally I’d be worried to see it with all the others, but God knows he could use the food. Maybe he’ll even put on a little weight.

Note: See if the Williams boy down the hall will do some shopping for me. We’re low on food.

-

From: Sarah Sawyer  
Subject: Checking in (March 6th 18:29)

John,

I’m terribly sorry again to hear about your aunt, and I hope that things have been going well and that she’s recovering nicely. I’m sure since she’s got such a wonderful doctor as yourself looking after her, she’s bound to be feeling better.

Initially you asked me for a week’s leave, but since I haven’t heard anything from you I thought it might be a good idea to check in and see how things were going. Will you be returning to the clinic on Monday? I hate to ask like this but it’s been a busy week and we’re running a bit low on staff, so any help would be much appreciated. Feel free to take as much time as you need of course, but if you’re aunt is doing better we would love to have you back.

Best,

Sarah

To: Sarah Sawyer  
Subject: RE: Checking in (March 7th 06:15)

Sarah,

Sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to come back this week, or any time soon in fact. My aunt is not doing well at all, and I’m needed here to take care of her. I’ll let you know when I can come back to work, but until then I’m afraid I have to stay here.

John

From: Sarah Sawyer  
Subject: RE: RE: Checking in (March 7th 08:45)

John,

Is everything alright? You’ve had us a bit worried the last few weeks and now this, is there something you need to talk about? I’m here if you need me.

Best,

Sarah

-

March 9th [private]

Day 8

We had a row today. Well, less of a row and more of me sitting there while he yelled at me. A lot.

Everything seemed like it was going fine today, but it all went downhill so fast that I didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. He was pacing again (note: watch carefully for obsessive pacing), and in hindsight I can see that it was more frantic than usual. But I still made the mistake of asking how he was feeling (note: don’t do that), and he blew up at me. Shouting that I didn’t need to badger him every five minutes, that he didn’t need me to hover, etc. When I tried to back off it just got worse. He started going on and on about how I was holding him there against his will, and that he could just up and leave if he felt like it. I suppose the fact that he didn’t actually try this time is a good sign.

The oddest part of it all was when he started going on about Mycroft. He wasn’t himself at that point – he’d gotten so worked up that it was like he couldn’t tell what was real and what was in his head anymore and he was just lashing out because of it. I tried to calm him down but when I did he snapped that he knew all about my “plan” with Mycroft and that it wasn’t going to work. It must have been the paranoia setting in again, because he seemed to think that his brother and I have some elaborate scheme to torment him by getting him clean. I couldn’t quite catch it all, but that’s what it seemed like.

He calmed down eventually after he’d yelled himself hoarse. He did manage to break a few things in the flat, just a mug (one of my favorites of course) and a plate, but nothing that I can’t replace. I know that it was just because of the cravings. I know that his body is driving him mad right now demanding cocaine and he’s lashing out because of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t fun to have him ranting and raving at me for two solid hours. At least I know that it’s not actually because of me.

I think it’s ok now. I hope it is at least. He’s been sulking for almost an hour, but that’s to be expected. We’ll see if he actually talks to me any time soon.

-

The weight of uneasy silence lay over the flat like a shroud. Once more night had fallen in the world outside without a word being spoken in the small room, shadows crossing the carpet in the persistent hush and darkness creeping in on quiet feet unannounced and unremarked upon. If silence could be a physical thing, if it could have presence and weight and feeling, this particular one would be a heavy thing indeed.

And yet even though the quiet was deep and unyielding, the anger that had been contained in it had softened somehow as the hours passed. The brittle rage and desperate frustration that had emanated through the room had lessened as time went on, easing off as the two men sitting in their separate corners had carefully gone about their business of ignoring each other. This silence was infinitely better than the shouting that had preceded it anyway, even if there were moments when John had wanted to shout himself just for something to do and a way to break the tension. But that tension had evaporated on its own leaving contrition and understanding in its wake. Sherlock may still have been sulking angrily on the bed after his prolonged outburst, but John was willing to take sulking over anger any day.

Today had simply been another in a string of trying and exhausting days, and if it was going to end in awkward silence then that was just how things were going to have to be. Sherlock was not taking to his rehabilitation well, something that John had expected and done his best to prepare for but still was struggling to adjust for. Even dealing with Harry any of the times he had tried to help get her through her alcohol problems hadn’t been nearly this bad. Whether it was the cravings or the boredom or the side effects of withdrawal that seemed to make everything just that much worse, there was always something new that John had to leap to deal with on a moment’s notice and it was running him ragged. And today had been the worst of the lot. Sherlock had snapped, utterly and completely, the intense need for cocaine that was wracking his body driving him to lash out at the only available scapegoat for his misery – John.

He had ranted. He had raved. He had yelled at John until he was red in the face and no longer coherent in his anger and frustration and rising desperation. For Sherlock, John was the sole reason that he was feeling so terrible, the only thing keeping him between freedom and cocaine, the one who was conspiring to make his life as painful as possible. And when Sherlock wasn’t heaping abuse on John, when he wasn’t blaming him for every problem and misfortune in the world, he was begging. That was perhaps the most unnerving, when the anger had subsided for just a moment and enough ragged need had broken through for Sherlock to whisper a hoarse and exhausted “Please”.  And when John had still refused, shaking his head resolutely even in the face of this newfound and suspicious vulnerability, the anger had returned.

The storm had passed, finally, hours after it had begun when both men were wrung out and exhausted from it all. John knew they wouldn’t talk about it, that even after all the heightened emotion and intense reactions of today they wouldn’t bring it up and discuss it like they probably should. That wasn’t how this worked, how _they_ worked. And Sherlock certainly wouldn’t apologize, no matter how much John might wish he would. No, even if Sherlock _was_ sorry, something that John both hoped that he might be and was glumly certain that he wasn’t, he still wouldn’t apologize to John for the things that he had said. Not for accusing him of conspiring with Mycroft, not for shouting insult after insult, not even for doing his level best to deduce the most hurtful things about John’s life he could manage in his current state. Contrite silence was the best that John could hope for, and at this point he was going to take it.

When it became obvious that Sherlock was determined to fall asleep without saying a single word, John resigned himself to the familiar routine that he had developed over the last week. After getting up to turn off the few lights that were illuminating the flat, with a sigh he settled himself into the chair as best he could for another excruciating night of watch punctuated by much too little sleep. By now, after over a week of sleeping and sitting in this damn chair for most of the hours of the day and night John rather felt as though his spine was permanently fused with the fabric of the seat and had been so badly damaged that it would never truly recover. He would manage though, and continue to suffer on in silence. He always did.

“Oh would you just get in the bed already?”

The suddenness first words spoken in several hours to break the silence that had felt as though it would endure until the end of time surprised John nearly as much as what was being asked by them. Certain that he couldn’t have heard the peevish question from Sherlock correctly, he looked over at the bed where Sherlock was currently laying flat on his back staring up at the ceiling with an irritated frown on his face.

“Excuse me?”

With a frustrated sigh Sherlock turned his head to meet John’s curious gaze, the frown deepening and an angry furrow creasing his forehead as he snapped, “You heard me perfectly well the first time. Just shut up and get in the bed before I lose my damn mind any more than I already have.”

Evidently John _had_ heard him correctly, but that did nothing to change how ridiculous the imperious demand was. “No, Sherlock,” he began patiently, resorting to the same Doctor Voice he had used only a few hours earlier under very different circumstances. “You need the bed more than I do, I’m just fine sleeping in the chair. I think I’m even getting used to it, God knows I’ve slept in worse conditions than this before –“

“If I have to spend one more night listening to you fidget or one more day having to hear you moan about your back I just might snap and kill you. Painfully.”

It was startled silence that fell this time after Sherlock’s irritated outburst, tinged with no small amount of injured pride. “I don’t moan about my back,” John mumbled quietly, breaking Sherlock’s gaze to look down at the floor and earning nothing more than a contemptuous snort in reply. Apparently Sherlock did not share John’s good opinion on how stoically he had been enduring his banishment from the bed.

But John was quick to recover, gaining his feet rapidly enough as he brushed the embarrassment aside to resume his role as responsible caregiver. “Besides, I can’t sleep in the same bed as you, you’re my patient. It’s inappropriate.”

“John,” Sherlock said, sitting up with a sigh that rang with the familiar sound of rapidly departing patience. “I am a grown man whose profession is sleeping with people for money. You are a grown man who has paid me for those services, and you are currently breaking every ethical code in existence to help me recover from a cocaine addiction in your flat. I think we are long past being able to worry about what is and is not appropriate.”

_Well when you put it that way…_

The treacherous thought slipped through before John could stop himself, and he shook his head to clear it away as quickly as possible. No matter _how_ Sherlock put it, it was still wildly inappropriate for a doctor to sleep in the same bed as his patient, especially when their previous relations were taken into account. All it took was a brief flash of memory of the lecherous smile on Sherlock’s face as he had feverishly taunted John with his suggestion of “payment” to convince John that sleeping next to Sherlock was a terrible idea. Never mind that John desperately wanted to crawl right into that tiny bed with the man who was already there – in fact it was just because of that very desire that John shouldn’t. It was too tempting, too dangerous, too…everything.

“Listen, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s not even about appropriateness, it just feels…wrong.”

But Sherlock appeared not to hear him, or if he did he brushed right over John’s words with careless dismissal and a wave of his hand. “Besides, it would be an excellent way of keeping watch while still being able to get some sleep. If I’m the one sleeping against the wall there’s almost no way for me to get out of bed without waking you. Honestly, I’m astonished you didn’t think of it sooner.”

 _Oh._ _Oh_ damn _him._

“Oh, _fine_ ,” John sighed in resignation, giving up on the argument that had truly been doomed since the start. “But only because I’m afraid my spine will snap if I spend another night sitting up.”

Getting up with a small groan and adamantly refusing to accept how pleased he was with the stupid thing he was about to do, John quickly got himself ready for bed while very fiercely looking anywhere but at the git he was about to share a bed with. A small but fierce blush spread over his cheeks as he undressed, one that had no place whatsoever on his face considering just how many times Sherlock had seen him naked and the things they had gotten up to at those times. But there was something different about this, this entirely unerotic stripping down to pants and undershirt to share a bed for an entire night, something that made John more uncomfortable and more embarrassed about this night spent together than any of the others. It had been so much _simpler_ when they were just having sex. The expectations were set, there were none of these messy feelings to worry about, and when the deed was done they each went on their merry way without having to deal with any of the aftermath. Simple.

When he was finally ready for bed after the longest ordeal of undressing under another’s gaze that he had ever endured, John very nearly dove under the covers in order to shake the persistent feeling that Sherlock had been staring at him all the while. That was ridiculous of course, as Sherlock had rolled onto his side and was staring at the wall instead, but at least under the confusion of settling in and arranging himself in the limited space John was able to calm his stuttering heartbeat and find a position that would just barely keep him from touching Sherlock in any way that could be construed as inappropriate.

“Just sleep, I promise,” he muttered when he was finally in place, as much a reassurance for himself as for Sherlock. “We both need as much as we can get.”

“Just sleep. Of course.” The reply was quiet, barely heard, a whisper in the dark that was spoken as much to the wall as to anyone else who might be a few scant inches from him. If there was anything at all in those few words it was disdain, certainly. Not disappointment, John told himself fiercely. Definitely not that.

-

March 12th [private]

Day 11

Bad day.

Very bad day.

-

John was frightened.

There had been a great deal about this whole ordeal that had unnerved and unsettled him deeply. There had been new experiences that threw him violently out of his comfort zone, decisions he had been forced to make that weighed on his conscience greatly, and times when he felt so lost that he worried he would never be able to find himself or the person he had once been again. But tonight, for the first time since John had found Sherlock lying half dead on the street, John was deeply and truly afraid.

Sherlock hadn’t moved in two and a half hours. That in itself wasn’t terribly unusual – living in close proximity with Sherlock had exposed John to more than a few of his idiosyncrasies, of which prolonged periods of stillness was one. Granted he had been having a difficult time with keeping still as of late thanks to the withdrawals he was experiencing, but John knew that Sherlock was capable of going hours at a time without moving and experience no ill effects.

No, what was so frightening now was the position that Sherlock hadn’t moved a muscle from. Normally he liked to stretch out, taking up as much space as he possible could with absolute disregard for anyone else. John had learned this the hard way when they began sharing a bed at nights, discovering just how small a twin bed really was when you were competing for space with the lankiest man on the planet who seemed to take up twice as much room as a normal person. But now, Sherlock was not lying sprawled out across the bed as he had taken to doing when bored or trying to ignore his cravings. Right now, he was curled into the tiniest ball that he could manage, legs tucked up against his chest and arms wrapped tight around his head as if to ward off something terrible. And he was shaking.

The shaking was what worried John the most. He hadn’t acted like this since his initial overdose, and to see this delirium and violent trembling again was something that John had not prepared for. He had no idea what had brought this on, what had caused Sherlock to retreat inside himself earlier this morning or why he had so thoroughly walled himself off from any help that John had tried to give. It had only gone downhill from there, until Sherlock was entirely unresponsive and had curled himself into a defensive ball on the bed, emanating fear and panic and a thousand other things that John couldn’t even begin to name. And John had no idea how to help.

“Sherlock? Can you hear me?” His quiet question went unanswered, just as all the others had. It was possible that Sherlock _couldn’t_ hear him in his current state, so tangled up in his own mind and the demons that were plaguing him that anything John said or did was going completely unnoticed. In fact John suspected that was exactly the case, but on the slim chance that he could still reach Sherlock now he had to keep trying.

Stepping closer to the bed, “Please, I just want to help but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Still nothing. Words were clearly not going to solve this problem, or make a dent in it even, so if John wanted to help in any way he was going to have to try a new tactic. Taking another step that brought him up next to the bed, he reached out a slow and gentle hand to touch Sherlock’s trembling shoulder as softly and non-threateningly as he could manage. “Sherlock?” he whispered, praying for something, _any_ sign at all that his presence had been registered.

Maybe it was his imagination, maybe it was wishful thinking, maybe it was exhaustion that was finally catching up with him to make him hallucinate just as Sherlock certainly was, but John could swear that as he rested his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder his trembling lessened. It didn’t stop, but in that quiet moment when contact was made and reassurance given through touch alone, Sherlock’s tension eased just the slightest bit.

That decided it. Gently, with infinite care and painful slowness, John eased his way onto the bed next to Sherlock. The pains he took not to disturb the small bundle of nerves and isolation were in vain however, as even the dip in the bed and the sensation of another person gently lowering themselves next to him did nothing to stir the man who was so caught up in himself that he didn’t even twitch. That in itself was worrying, but John had settled on a course of action and there was no turning back from it now that he had begun. Reaching over he laid his hand back on the same spot where it had rested before

“It’s alright,” he murmured, willing himself to believe the words even as he spoke them. “You’re alright.”

Silence still answered him, but it seemed once again as though there had been a subtle lessening of Sherlock’s trembling. And sure enough, after several long minutes as the two men worlds apart sat together in silent contact, Sherlock began to slowly uncurl from his defensive posture. It wasn’t much, just enough to untuck his head and move his arms aside from where they cradled it, but it was enough to make John’s heart soar. A sudden burst of inspiration hit him, and with the gentleness with which one would lift a baby bird he slowly but surely lifted Sherlock’s head from the mattress to rest it in his lap.

Sherlock’s eyes were still closed, his body still radiating fear and tension, his mind clearly still elsewhere, but that was fine. John would sit here as long as he needed to until Sherlock returned to himself, running his fingers through his hair and murmuring empty platitudes to comfort him. It wasn’t much, but if it helped even a little bit he would stay here all day and night if he had to.

“We’ll get through this.”

He just hoped that he was right.

-

March 16th

 I know that there’s no one reading this blog. I know that this is the first public post here in a long time, and that even my therapist has stopped checking it. I know that this post will go unnoticed and that there’s no point to me even writing it, much less publishing it. But on the off chance that the person this blog post is about ever does see it, I need to write it anyway. And I need to write it for myself, and for the person who told me, and for everything that’s happened to me in the last month.

Victor Trevor, I know who you are.

I know all about your university adventures. And your extracurricular activities. I know about the “business” you started, the profits you made, the people you exploited. I know exactly what you would take in lieu of payment once you put people in a position where they couldn’t run away. I know all about the lives you ruined. You may think that you’ve left it all behind you now, that you’ve “moved on” and that there won’t be any lasting repercussions. You’re wrong.

I know what you did.

And I hope for your sake that we never, ever meet.

3 comments:

Please call me. Soon.  
 **E Thompson**

Is everything alright mate? It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything from you, and this seems kind of…dire. Shoot me an email or something?  
 **Bill Murray**

What the hell??? CALL  ME!!  
 **Harry Watson**

-

March 18th [private]

Day 17

I shouldn’t have made that last blog post public. Then again there are lots of things that I shouldn’t have done recently, and that’s hardly the worst of them. I just needed to say it, even if “saying it” was making a cryptic blog post that only a few people read. It was either post that or go out and find Victor myself, and that would have been worse. Hopefully now I can stop thinking about it, since there isn’t actually anything I can do. There are more important things to think about than some scumbag drug dealer I’ll probably never meet.

Sherlock is starting to feel slightly better, surprisingly. I’d like to think it’s because he was honest with me and told me about Victor, but that’d just be lying to myself. The cravings are just starting die down a bit and the physical symptoms aren’t as bad, nothing else. I don’t think the importance of what he told me even registers. But of course the fact that he’s feeling better means that he’s already getting seriously bored and antsy because of it. I’m going to need to do something about it soon if he’s going to keep getting better, because I have a feeling that boredom is going to be just about the worst thing for him at this point. Having nothing to do just means that he thinks about how much he wants to use, and the results of that drive us both up the wall. How do you entertain a genius though?

-

“I swear to God Sherlock, you have _got_ to stop pacing soon.”

“Or _what_?” Sherlock snapped, not pausing in his frenetic crossing and re-crossing of the same ten feet of carpet for a moment. He had been repeating those exact steps for over an hour now, wearing a groove in the carpet that did not look likely to come out any time soon and stretching John’s paper-thin nerves to their breaking point. His restless movements had been one thing two weeks ago, when they were both newly confined to the flat and John was concerned with much more important things than being irritated by Sherlock’s agitation. But now, when they had been occupying the same tiny space with no breaks for so long, they were both ready to snap. Sherlock was being driven mad by the combination of intense cravings and utter boredom that only made the desire for cocaine worse if only so that he could have something to _do_ instead of rot, and John was slowly but surely losing all patience with it. He was trying his best to stay calm, he really was, but there was only so much pacing and mumbling that one man could take before he broke.

“Well it’s not actually helping is it? It isn’t doing anything besides driving me crazy, so just _stop_.”

He didn’t stop. In fact, he not only continued to pace, he somehow managed to pace more vehemently, something that John had not thought possible until he witnessed the impossible man he had ended up caring for do just that. A wicked gleam danced through Sherlock’s eyes as he did so, and if John had possessed even an ounce less self control he would have buried his head in hands and given up right then and there.

Instead he allowed himself a few seconds of exhausted resignation as he pinched the bridge of his nose before gathering his strength for another attempt with a sigh. “Ok seriously, we have _got_ to find you something to do or we’re both going to go crazy.”

“Oh _really_ , you know that never occurred to me before John,” Sherlock spat caustically, a sneer on his face. “How wonderfully inventive you are, I think you might just be a bloody genius too.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, John stood his ground across the room and crossed his arms defiantly to keep from balling his hands into fists. He would be damned if he let Sherlock know just how much he was getting to him right now, even if the prick could probably read it all over him. “Listen, we can do this. There’s got to be something that you enjoy doing that’ll keep you busy – don’t you have any hobbies?”

The frantic pacing stopped for a moment, Sherlock halting in the middle of the room to glare angrily at John. “You know, I used to have this _wonderful_ hobby that kept me entertained for hours at a time, but wouldn’t you guess that some meddling doctor went and took it away from me. How unfortunate.”

John glared right back, matching Sherlock’s stare fearlessly. “Very funny. Completely unhelpful and reductive and ridiculous, but funny. Now, do you have any real suggestions?”

“Pah,” Sherlock snorted, resuming his pacing with a frown. “I don’t have _hobbies_. Hobbies are for housewives and bored businessmen on weekends."

“Well then what do you enjoy doing?” John asked through gritted teeth, breathing in through his nose and out through his nose to avoid snapping.

“Cocaine.”

“Anything _else_?”

“Oh, hell, this is ridiculous! What do you think you’re going to do John, find a magic cure for my boredom? I’ve lived with this my entire life and _you_ took away the only cure I ever had, so now what? The other things I enjoy aren’t exactly feasible as long as you have me under house arrest, unless you propose building a chemistry lab in here or summoning up a crime scene for me to investigate –“

“Wait.” John’s sudden, quiet interruption stopped Sherlock mid-rant, and he paused in his pacing as well to turn and look curiously at John.

“What do you mean, wait?”

“I mean I think you might be on to something there,” John began, trying not to get too excited at the idea that had just exploded fully formed in his mind. Crossing the room to open up his computer he sat down to start searching, hoping he’d be able to find what he was looking for and that this far-fetched plan might just work. “You liked solving mysteries for the police, right? Well you’re right, we can’t exactly go to crime scenes right now but I think I can work up the next best thing for you. Just give me a second.”

Astonishingly, there was no sarcastic comeback or derisive snort that followed this announcement, and after a few moments John heard the sound of bare feet quietly crossing the carpet to come stand behind him. He grinned to himself triumphantly, and with a happy “Ha!” he clicked on the link he was looking for.

“There we are, perfect. Now I know you’re right behind me, so turn around.”

“Why?”

“Shut up and do it. It’s so you won’t peek, you nosey arse.”

There was a grumble and after only a brief pause a quiet shuffle of feet, and when John peeked over his shoulder to check Sherlock was indeed standing with his arms crossed and back turned. Frankly just getting Sherlock to do as he asked was quite the accomplishment for today, but John had much bigger things in mind and so with a grin he turned back to the webpage he had pulled up from yesterday’s edition of The Times.

“Alright, here we go. Two days ago, there was a robbery at a posh jewelry store on the high street. The alarms weren’t sounded, and the video cameras were disabled so there’s not footage. The police are stumped and have no leads whatsoever – which means that _you_ shouldn’t be able to solve it either.”

There was a snort from behind John’s chair, and without even needing to turn around he could see the dismissive hand wave that came with it. “Don’t be stupid, it was one of the employees.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It has to be, there’s no other answer. An inside job is the only thing that makes logical sense, and there’s no reason for the owner of the shop to have done it, so it must be a disgruntled employee looking to get some of their own back. Obvious”

Allowing a smug smile to creep over his face, John shook his head and said ruefully, “Sorry, you’ll have to do better than that. I need a name, or you’re no better than the police.”

“No better than –“ Sherlock breathed, furious indignation ringing through every word. In an instant he had swarmed behind John and was leaning in close over his shoulder with total disregard for personal space to peer at the computer screen, brows knit and a gleam in his eye that John had not seen days, if not weeks. “Give me an hour and some better information than the _drivel_ in this article and I’ll have the case solved. No better than the police, _honestly_.”

With a challenge and a short newspaper article, Sherlock Holmes had come back to life.

-

March 20th [private]

Day 19

I don’t know why I didn’t think of the mystery thing sooner. I think it’s the only thing keeping both of us sane at this point, although I don’t know what I’m going to do when I run out of cases to read him. Right now I’m working my way back through the online archives of a couple different London newspapers, but he’s so quick on most of them that I think I’m going to run out of unsolved crimes pretty soon. There’ve only been a couple cases that have taken him more than fifteen minutes to solve, and he gets through most of them in a minute or two once he gets all the information. I try dragging them out by reading them slowly or holding back certain things that seem like they’d be important, but he’s just too fast for me. God help me when I run out.

-

“Anything?”

“No, nothing yet.”

“Nothing? There can’t be nothing, check again.”

John sighed, rubbing a hand wearily over his face as in resignation. “Sherlock, there’s not been anything new in the last minute, and there won’t be in the next thirty seconds. There’s a lot of crime in London, but not _that_ much.”

“Well, check somewhere else,” Sherlock snapped, continuing to pace behind John’s chair in impatience. “New York, check there. There’s even more crime in New York City than there is here, there has to be something.”

“Alright alright, I’ll look. I don’t think New York is really your thing though…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I can solve a crime just as well in New York as I can here. It would be more interesting too, Americans can be so _inventive_ with their atrocities.”

“Lovely. Try not to sound too excited about murder, alright?”

“Anything?” Sherlock asked somewhere between five and ten seconds later, overestimating both the speed of John’s typing and his research capabilities in one.

“I’m looking, keep your hair on –“

_Ping!_

Navigating over to the page of alerts he had set up for things like “London” and “murder” and everything that could possibly exist in between, John went to investigate the source of the beep with a silent prayer that someone had been killed in a particularly inventive manner. “Let’s see what that was – oh. Huh.”

When he didn’t elaborate immediately, Sherlock butted in with an impatient as John was reading. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock hissed, no longer even pretending to be waiting with anything resembling calm.

“Oh, right.” Shaking his head gently John pulled himself out of the article he had been reading, reminding himself that they were looking for _crimes_ not tragedies. It was a shame though, this one was particularly interesting. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything, this alert that just popped up is interesting is all. It’s not important though, it doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re looking for.”

“What was it?”

“It’s just…I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about these serial suicides have you?”


	9. Chapter 9

How had he gotten here? How, out of all the myriad places and situations that John could have found himself in the bustling, ever-changing metropolis of London, had he ended up crouched behind a trashcan in an alleyway with a gun tucked into his waistband and his heart hammering like thunder in his ears?

Oh, he knew of course. There was only one reason it could be, the same thing that had brought him to every ridiculous happenstance and absurd impossibility he’d found himself tangled up in recently, and its name was Sherlock Holmes. The git. The absolute, sodding, horrible, wonderful git who had somehow persuaded John to participate in this madness and currently had him so worried that his hands were sweaty and his breath was coming sharp and jagged as he waited for disaster to strike. John had no idea who was the bigger idiot – Sherlock for coming up with this plan or himself for getting talked into it.

But really, it had always been coming to this. As much as John liked to vehemently tell himself that he was a sensible, responsible, level-headed man, recently his life had been nothing but a series of escalating bad decisions of which this was just the most recent and only arguably the most drastic. And deny it though he might, even now as he sat hidden in an alleyway cursing the very name of the man who had led him here, he could not deny that he loved every solitary second of it.

But inappropriate adrenaline high notwithstanding, that did not change the fact that what they were doing was incredibly dangerous. Stupidly so, in fact, something that John had reminded Sherlock of more times than he could count throughout the planning process that had led up to this evening. There were about a hundred different ways that this could go wrong, not the least of which was the pressing worry that John would lose sight of Sherlock where he stood like a statue across the crowded square. The endless flow of London’s masses surged around him as they made their busy way home from work in the already darkened evening, oblivious to the enormity of what the lone man standing still and silent on the sidewalk was doing. That was exactly how they’d planned it of course, but it did nothing to calm John’s nerves as Sherlock passed in and out of his line of sight behind fresh waves of commuters. As John knew all too well from hard-won experience, anything could happen in the blink of an eye when the person he was supposed to protect disappeared from view.

The fear of just what might happen had been sitting in him, heavy and inescapable, for three days now, ever since they had concocted this ridiculous scheme in a whirlwind of nerves and heady excitement that was as dangerous as it was intoxicating. It was that excitement, the thrill of finally having something to do after so many weeks of frustration and misery that had convinced John to go along with this insanity. Well, that and the fact that Sherlock had been driving him so absolutely up the walls during the previous few days that John would have agreed to just about anything to shut him up. Two weeks ago it had seemed impossible that there could be anything more frustrating or difficult to deal with than Sherlock going slowly insane from the cravings that came with withdrawals from hard narcotics, but that had been _before_ he turned his focus from cocaine onto a brand new obsession with murder.

At the time, it had seemed like giving Sherlock unsolved crimes to puzzle out had been just the miracle they both had been looking for, and for a few days it was. For the brief span of days when John had a seemingly limitless supply of easily solved kidnappings, disappearances, and murders to dole out, it had been the perfect antidote to the boredom and cabin fever that had been driving them both to the brink. It kept them occupied as they stayed cooped up in the tiny flat, it got Sherlock’s mind off of how much he still wanted to use, and, best of all to John’s mind, it brought a spark and a joy into Sherlock’s eyes that he had never seen there before in all the time they had known each other. It was as though solving mysteries, even through the unofficial and rather unorthodox medium of newspaper articles, made Sherlock’s life worth living instead of something to be endured.

But a week and a half after they had begun, John had become decidedly less enthusiastic about the whole endeavor. Things had been fine when he’d had plenty of unsolved crimes to throw in Sherlock’s direction for him to work through with delight instead of frustration. But then Sherlock’s attention had been thoroughly caught on one, singular, unsolvable case, and all at once they were getting absolutely nowhere. And, as John quickly discovered, Sherlock getting nowhere meant that any pretensions of happiness or even a something resembling a good mood were long gone.

It was just that dilemma that had brought John to this point, all of that frustration and anger coming together two days ago in an explosion of what could only be described as either the most brilliant plan of all time or the worst. They had only been at it for three days, hardly any time at all considering how long the police investigation into the disconnected and yet impossibly linked suicides had been going on, but to Sherlock three days spent on the same case felt like a lifetime of unanswered questions. He needed the answer _now_ , and the fact that he could not divine the solution that had evaded professional investigators by simply staring at newspaper articles was driving him mad. So mad that on that evening John had started musing on the impossible feat of making Sherlock realize that this was nothing more than a string of startlingly coincidental suicides that needed no further investigation. As he knew all too well now it had been a foolish thought, but he had been getting rather desperate to alleviate some of the…issues that had arisen.

One such issue, although certainly not the only one, was the fact that Sherlock had evidently decided that sleep was unnecessary while solving this case. The others had been easily opened, shut, and put away again with no disruption to the sleep that he still so desperately needed, but the open wound that this ongoing mystery represented gnawed at his mind and kept him up nights even when the exhaustion was wearing him down to nothing. John had been able to _see_ how tired he was that Thursday evening as he sat still as stone in the middle of the floor with articles and reports scattered around him like the remnants of some papery explosion, eyes glazed with focus so intense it was nearly frightening. The bags under his eyes from three sleepless nights were shocking in a face still so pale and thin even after weeks of regular meals, and even though it was just a product of John’s own tiredness he’d fancied for a brief moment that he could see the seams that held Sherlock together cracking and splitting under the pressure. A month of hard work, frittered away in three days of frustration and dead ends. It was maddening.

Something had needed to be done about the state that Sherlock had worked himself into, not to mention getting something resembling a meal into him and forcing him to take a nap at the very least. It was a daunting list, but breaking him out of his own mind was the first task and undoubtedly the most difficult.

“Sherlock. Sherlock can you hear me?”

He hadn’t answered of course, stubbornly continuing to stare at the spread of photographs and articles littered around him, but he’d at least registered John’s presence with a slight twitch of his eyebrows and a small movement of the hands that were tented in front of his mouth. It was a small victory, but it was one to be valued considering what they had come through to get there.

“Sherlock, you need to stop this. You need rest.”

Apparently the absurdity of the suggestion was enough to distract Sherlock momentarily from his contemplation, the notion of taking even a brief pause for rest rankling enough for him to look up from the papers to glare angrily across the room. “But it doesn’t make any _sense_ John!”

“I know, I know it doesn’t make sense but well, sometimes the world doesn’t make any sense. Strange things just…happen sometimes.” John paused, taking a fortifying breath before plunging ahead with what was sure to be an unwelcome question. “What if this is all just a really strange coincidence?”

“Please,” Sherlock scoffed, refusing to even entertain the possibility for a moment.

“No, I’m serious. Listen Sherlock, I know you want to think that there’s some big conspiracy behind all this and crack it open, but life just doesn’t work like that sometimes. The police have been working on this for _months_ and they’ve got nothing, what makes you so sure that there has to be something there?”

“The police are idiots,” Sherlock snarled, voice dripping with disdainful scorn. “They couldn’t see a real case if it was right in front of them, which right now it _is._ This isn’t just a coincidence John, and honestly I’m appalled that you’d think so.”

“Oh really? Why?”

Fuelled by frustration and the need to just make John _understand_ already, Sherlock had surged unsteadily up from the sitting position he had been in for far too long, ignoring what surely must have been incredible numbness in his legs to pace restlessly in the small confines of the room. “For God’s sake, _think_ about it! It makes no sense – people don’t commit serial suicides, not like this. All together and all at once when there’s an external force at work to brainwash or convince them perhaps, but one at a time strung out over a period of months? And all with the same highly specific and difficult to obtain poison? Ridiculous. There _must_ be another factor at work here, I just need to find it. And when I do, we can solve the whole thing.”

“But it _has_ to be suicide, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“No, it’s the only thing that you _think_ makes sense, and that’s because we don’t have all the facts. I’m stuck here with these absurd newspaper articles that don’t even begin to cover everything, and no matter how many times I try to put it all together it doesn’t work. I’m missing _something_ and I don’t know what and –“

“Ok, ok, calm down,” John broke in, interrupting the tirade before it could build up to full steam. “Calm down, we can figure this out together, alright? Listen, maybe you’re just not looking at this right. Not seeing the patterns from the right angle or something.”

A caustic snort from Sherlock told John just what he thought of John’s ability to help him see anything that he’d previously missed, but John was not to be daunted so easily. “Hey, it’s worth a try isn’t it? It’s better than being angry at some pieces of paper.”

“While I appreciate your attempts to help John, you’re missing the point entirely. There _are_ no patterns, none at all. No connecting factors with the victims, no commonalities, no shared _anything_.” He marched furiously over to the wall next to the desk that had been papered with articles and profiles, snatching obituaries from where they had been pinned and rattling off facts and figures at alarming speed. “First victim, a prominent London businessman, married with children and found dead in an empty high rise. Second, a teenage boy from East London, disappeared while out with a friend and found dead in a sports center. Third, a female MP who vanished from her birthday celebrations to turn up dead in a warehouse. Fourth, a media personality from Cardiff who appeared dead in an abandoned house in Brixton –“

“Wait, Cardiff?”

In that exact moment, that instant when the world had stopped on its axis and the future had changed around them, something had stirred inside John. Something was wrong, although he could not put his finger on what and could not begin to put such an ephemeral and fleeting thought into words. If this was what Sherlock felt all the time, no wonder he was fraying at the edges. “Did you say one of the victims was from Cardiff?”

Sherlock had paused, either because he too felt the enormity of this moment or perhaps simply because he had been thrown off kilter by the break in his monologue, before regaining his footing and frowning slightly. “Yes. Jennifer Wilson, the fourth victim lived and worked in Cardiff in news production. She was the only one who didn’t live in some area of the city.”

“What was she doing in London then?”

Sherlock looked down at the papers he had ripped down from the wall, narrowing his eyes in concentration before answering. “On an overnight business trip, according to her husband.”

“Well, that’s strange.”

“Strange? Strange how?”

“Seriously? Think about it – who makes the trip all the way from Cardiff to London just to go kill themselves in an abandoned house in _Brixton_?”

Sherlock froze. All of the frantic movement and energy that had possessed him for the last three days froze right along with him, distilled in an instant from rapidly pacing limbs and uncontrollable thought down to a light of perfect realization that burned like sudden fire in his eyes. “Oh.”

Feeling bolstered by Sherlock’s sudden epiphany, whatever it was, John had continued on with the train of thought that had sparked it. “Uh, ok. Right, so, so something must have happened, yes? In between her getting to London and then killing herself? Maybe something happened to the others too, something that drove them all to commit suicide in that way, and _that’s_ why they’re so similar? Is that it?”

“No. No that’s not it at all, you couldn’t be more wrong.” A small and reverent smile began to blossom over Sherlock’s face like the dawning of the sun, and with a sudden huff of laughter he clapped his hands in front of his face as he swayed in place. “But oh, _oh_ yes that’s it! John, you are _magnificent_!”

“But wait, you just said I was wrong. Which was it?”

“Oh you were absolutely wrong, or at least your answer was. But the _idea_ , the idea that you got so wrong was brilliant.”

John frowned, not in the least because of the repeated reminders of how wrong he had apparently been. “I’m not following.”

“Of course you’re not. Listen, see if you can keep up. You were right that she didn’t come to London to commit suicide, no one would do that – she was here on a business trip. An overnight business trip from Cardiff to London for some media nonsense according to her husband, and yet somehow she ends up dead in a house in Brixton. It doesn’t add up, and _that_ is what’s been bothering me so much. Move, I need to check something.” Sherlock had resumed his pacing as he explained the solution he had so suddenly come to, and quick as a flash he came over to stand next to where John was sitting at the desk. Well, stand was perhaps not the best description of what he was doing – looming threateningly was much more accurate.

“Wait, what are you doing?” John asked, receiving no answer even as Sherlock chivvied him impatiently from his seat and sat himself right down in the empty space.

“I need more information than these damned articles can give me,” he muttered while typing furiously. “I didn’t try this before because I was sure it wouldn’t work but there’s no other way – hah!”

Leaning over to peer over his shoulder, John frowned in confusion for a long moment at the website he didn’t recognize until realization struck and his heart plummeted. “Oh my God – _please_ tell me you didn’t just hack into a police database on my laptop. How the hell did you even just do that?”

A quick grin, self-satisfied and wicked beyond belief flashed across Sherlock’s face. “You could say that I have a special connection to this database. And you forget that I worked with the police for nearly a year. It’s incredible what Detective Inspectors who should know better will leave lying on their desks for anyone to find: names, phone numbers, passwords…”

John groaned and buried his face in his hands as vivid pictures of a lifetime spent in prison for cybercrimes and the theft of confidential police information played out in his mind. “Jesus, Sherlock. _Jesus_. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get into for this?”

“Oh come now, of all the things that you and I have done, using a borrowed password to look at crime scene photos is the one that bothers you?” Sherlock asked with a disdainful sniff. “Honestly, it’s Lestrade’s fault for not changing his password for three years, that’s just sloppy. Ah yes, here we are.”

Gesturing at the screen, Sherlock pointed to the series of photographs of a darkened room that he had pulled up. “Now, these are the photographs from the night Jennifer Wilson was found in Lauriston Gardens. Tell me – what do you see?”

John leaned in close over Sherlock’s shoulder for a better look, peering at the photos that showed a grisly tableau laid out in long shadows and garishly lurid colors before him. It was a strange sensation, to peer so clinically at photographs of what had once been a living, breathing human being. Even still, even after all that John had seen and every tragedy that he had endured in quarters far too close for comfort, it never got any easier. But wallowing in the sadness of it all would do nothing to help the woman whose body he had been asked to examine, nor the people who had survived her, and so as he had done so many times before John swallowed his unease and focused on what was required of him. “I see a dead body. A woman, lying face down on the floor in the middle of an empty room.”

“A perfectly sound analysis, but I _was_ hoping you’d go deeper.”

Furrowing his brow with a frustrated sigh and leaning in even closer, John scanned over the pictures that Sherlock had selected in faint confusion. “Uhm, she’s wearing pink, and I think I see something on the floor by her hand, but I can’t tell from this angle what it is.”

“Is that it?”

Hearing the expectation in Sherlock’s voice he frowned, uncertain what exactly he was looking for. “Yes. Yes, I think so, there’s nothing else there –“

“Exactly! That’s exactly it, don’t you see?” Sherlock sounded like a child at Christmas, very nearly bouncing in his seat with excitement at whatever he had found. Personally, John had not the faintest clue what in the pictures he had just examined could have him so excited – as Sherlock had just confirmed there was nothing in them but a lone body, left face down and pitiful in the middle of an empty floor.

When he didn’t immediately respond with the enthusiasm that was evidently required by this situation, Sherlock had turned to look at him with a look of mixed wonder and horror on his face. If it hadn’t been so novel an expression to see on his face, not to mention one that was just on the edge of insulting if John thought about it too long, it would have been hilarious. “Oh good lord, how can you live like this? Alright – you said it yourself, she didn’t come to London to kill herself. She came on a business trip. What do people take on business trips when they’re planning to stay the night?”

Swallowing his indignation at the insult, John crossed his arms and played along. “Well, a laptop? Their cell phone? A change of clothes…a suitcase?”

“Yes!” Sherlock had all but shouted in his excitement, leaping up from the chair to resume the pacing that appeared to be his only outlet for the delirious energy that had possessed him. “Yes, no one would go on a business trip without a suitcase, especially not a woman with a wardrobe like hers, but it’s nowhere to be found. A suitcase with her belongings isn’t mentioned in any of the articles, it’s not in these photographs that document the entire scene, so where is it? What happened to it?”

“Maybe she left it somewhere, at a hotel? You said yourself that she was intending to stay the night.”

“Just like the case, there’s no mention of Jennifer Wilson’s previous whereabouts in London before she showed up dead in Brixton. It’s as though she got on the train in Cardiff and fell off face first in that house, and I’m willing to bet that if you called every hotel in London they’d have no record of her checking in. She never had anywhere to leave her case, so it being missing from the scene means only one thing.”

He’d paused, eyes wide and lit with the thrill of expectation, and in that moment John realized with a sudden start that Sherlock was happier than he had ever seen him. He wasn’t just coasting through his life, no longer just existing so that he could make it from high to high. There was a flush of happiness and excitement in his face instead of scorn or vacant emptiness, energy and joy in his movements instead of studied listlessness, and any last trace of the faint despair that had lingered around the edges of him was long gone. Just then, in the instant between discovery and revelation, Sherlock was _alive_.

So entranced was John by the Sherlock’s transformation that he could not even begin to provide the answer that Sherlock was so clearly waiting for, and after only a few seconds he could wait no longer. “Murder! It had to be murder John, there’s no other explanation, which means that _all_ of them were murders! They’re not serial suicides, they’re serial killings!”

_That_ was certainly enough to break John out of his trance, and he blinked twice in surprise as he processed what Sherlock had just practically shouted at him. “Wait slow down, why does a missing case _have_ to mean murder? I know you think the police are idiots, but I think they can at least tell the difference between murder and suicide for something like this. You said yesterday that all the victims clearly took the pills themselves, so how can it have been murder?”

“I have no idea. I have no clue how he gets them to take the pills, but the fact is undeniable that there was someone else present when Jennifer Wilson died and they took her suitcase.”

“Alright, alright, so what you’re telling me is that there’s a serial killer running loose out there who kills his victims by getting them to kill _themselves,_ and doesn’t leave a single trace of himself behind in the process?”

A grin, enormous and only the slightest bit disturbing considering the circumstances had spread over Sherlock’s face. “Yes. It’s _magnificent_.”

“We have to tell the police.”

The look of delight had vanished from Sherlock’s face in an instant, disappearing behind a hardened mask of angry determination. “No. Absolutely not.”

“What?” John asked in confusion, although the sinking in the pit of his stomach had told him everything he needed to know about what Sherlock was intending. “Did I miss something, because you just agreed with me that –“

Sherlock shook his head, stubborn determination written in every line of his body. “I know what you said, but we are _not_ going to the police with this information.”

“I know you’re wary of the police Sherlock, but we need to tell them. People are _dying_ for God’s sake, we have to do something.”

“And why would they listen to us, hmm? A doctor and a junkie, what the hell do we know about anything? And some fine proof we’d have to show them – look at all this circumstantial evidence we pulled from newspapers and hacking into your databases, will you believe us now?” If it was possible for derision to be a tangible thing, the scorn in Sherlock’s voice would have been positively oozing from every word. It shouldn’t have been possible for a human voice to be that sarcastic, but that was Sherlock for you – routinely doing the impossible even when it was completely uncalled for. _Especially_ when it was uncalled for.

Crossing his arms with a sigh, leaning back on the desk, and bowing to the inevitable, John had asked the question that he knew Sherlock had been waiting for. “Fine then genius, what do you propose? We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“Yes, exactly,” Sherlock said quietly, and all at once John had known exactly what the madman he had allowed into his life was proposing.

He had seen it all, everything that had led him to exactly this instant full of fear and excitement, promise and possibility, disaster and glory held in the balance. It was as though he had suddenly been granted the psychic powers that he absolutely did not believe in, allowing him to see laid out as clear as day the arguments that followed, the negotiations, the planning, everything that had brought him to the present moment. And yet, even though he had _known_ just how futile his efforts would prove to be, even though he had seen the outcomes spill out before him, John had still not been able to do anything but try as he might to prevent it. Was it pointless? Absolutely – but he had a role to fulfill and he would be damned if he didn’t give it his best effort anyway.

“No. No, no _way_ are we going to take this on ourselves. Are you insane?”

But instead of rising to the bait as John had hoped he would, Sherlock’s expression did not change an inch. He didn’t sneer, he didn’t roll his eyes, he didn’t even snort at John’s attempt to divert him from his purpose. Instead he simply looked John in the eye with an expression more forthright and honest than any he had yet worn and said quietly, “John, he’s killed five people and the police are no closer to catching him now than when they started. He’s going to _keep_ killing people without anyone even knowing what he’s done, and if we don’t do something they never will. We have to stop him.”

He had stepped forward then, slowly but surely crossing the room to come stand no more than a foot from John. No longer was he a picture of frantic desperation, no longer fraying at the edges, no longer tinged with madness and addiction and lingering pain – the man who stood before John now had been distilled and purified by the knowledge of what he needed to do and the one thing that stood in his way. “Please John. Help me with this.”

That had been it. Oh, it certainly hadn’t been the end of either the arguing or the furious yelling – there had been _plenty_ of that in the hours that followed, more than enough to wear them both out and leave them wrung out with exhaustion even as they planned late into the night. John had needed a great deal more than a please to convince him to go along with this, but no matter what he told himself he still knew that the quiet sincerity of purpose in Sherlock’s voice had been the first turning of the tide in his heart. And so they had begun to craft their plot, although it was far less of a collaborative effort than John would have liked. In truth it was hardly a collaboration at all, since Sherlock had somehow managed to formulate their entire plan of action in the span of time it had taken John to figure out what he was intending. John’s main contribution to the process seemed to be vetoing the most preposterously dangerous elements, although his veto was less of a decisive action than it was a bargaining process that ended up with Sherlock getting most of what he wanted anyway.

Even so it was a simple plan – so simple in fact that as they carried it out now John was half convinced that it would never work. As Sherlock had deduced with nothing more than logic and a few crime scene photos, the killer had made his first and only mistake with Jennifer Wilson and that small slip was exactly what they were going to exploit. The missing suitcase, unremarked upon and unnoticed by the full scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police Service, would be what led them straight to the person who had taken it and who had certainly taken its owner’s life as well. No matter that the existence of that suitcase was a matter of supposition that they had no actual evidence for, it was still the cornerstone of their entire investigation and the bait with which they had laid the trap that would hopefully catch them a serial killer.

The first step was one that was both easy and incredibly tedious, and so it naturally fell to John to carry it out. Under Sherlock’s careful direction he placed ads in every one of London’s classified papers, each one identical and utterly unremarkable to anyone who was not their target.

> **Lost:** pink suitcase and personal items including mobile phone on night of January 27 from Lauriston Grdns, Brixton. Please meet J. Wilson at 8 PM May 1 at 24 Northumberland Rd to return, reward offered.

John was certain that it wouldn’t work. Why would their killer even _check_ the classified ads in the first place, much less have his attention caught by something so innocuous? But Sherlock insisted that this brief advertisement would not only be seen by the person they were chasing, it would draw him to the meeting place like a moth to a flame, straight into the trap they had laid for him.

Of course, said trap was not much to speak of. It did not involve having police lie in wait as John had repeatedly suggested, nor even some sort of elaborate setup that included cameras with which to document their encounter and the possibility of a confession. No, there was nothing to ensure that their adventure would yield beneficial results besides Sherlock’s insistence that he could find the evidence they needed, and there were no safeguards set in place besides John keeping watch with his gun and the moderate protection offered by the public setting of the meeting. The entirety of their carefully constructed trap was putting an ad in the paper and hoping that their target would arrive on schedule, and if he did Sherlock would be standing alone on the corner to meet him. He’d been especially insistent on that particular point despite John’s strenuous objections, repeating again and again that he needed to be by himself if this had any chance of working.

“Every single one of the victims has disappeared from a public spot when they were alone,” Sherlock had explained for what must have been the fifth time with waning patience. They’d been at it for hours by that point, circling around each other with wary caution as the unstoppable force of Sherlock’s will collided with the immovable object of John’s stubborn determination. “He is a master of subterfuge who can hunt through a crowd unseen, and if we’re to have any hope of drawing him out into the open he _must_ feel comfortable and in his element. The instant he feels that something is different he’ll vanish and we’ll never catch him.”

Burying his face in his hands, John had sighed with all the weariness of a man who had not gotten a good night sleep in weeks. “Sherlock, this is literally insane. Do you even hear what you’re saying? This is a serial killer we’re talking about, someone who snatches people up and murders them without anyone being the wiser, and you expect me to just let you stand there and wait for him to grab you? And I mean this is all assuming that he’s going to see the ad in the first place and then be stupid enough to show up, but what are you going to do if he does? Be sarcastic at him and hope he gives up?”

“There are so many things wrong with what you just said I don’t even know where to begin. There is no question that the killer will show up, believe me. A man like that, he _needs_ the validation that being noticed will give him. It’s not about being stupid it’s about being clever, and if he’s clever enough to kill five people without leaving a shred of evidence behind he’s clever enough to want recognition for it. He’ll come.”

“And then? Do you have any sort of plan for when he does?”

“I don’t need one. What we need is an ID and evidence, and all _I_ require to obtain both is to see the person who shows up in response to this advert. In all likelihood he won’t even be able to pick me out from the crowd while I keep my distance and learn everything about him, and then I can slip away with him staying none the wiser. Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

Feeling his grip on both victory and his sanity slipping, John had ceded the point and moved on to his next hangup. “Fine, so tell me again why it has to be _you_ who’s the bait? Because I’m honestly not sold on that.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake John, of course it has to be me,” Sherlock snapped. “I’m the one who will be able to distinguish the killer from the crowds, I’m the one who has training and practice finding evidence, and I’m the one who will actually be intelligent enough to keep myself alive unlike all of his other victims. And _you_ are the one who has the training to protect me should things go wrong – honestly I can’t see what problem you could possibly have with the setup.”

“Oh I don’t know, it might be that the idea of throwing the person I’ve spent so long trying to get better right into the hands of a serial killer has me a _touch_ uncomfortable with the whole situation.”

“It hardly counts as throwing if you’re going to be right behind me with a gun. Besides, we both know that even if things do go wrong it’ll be the most favorable of the two possible negative outcomes.”

“You’re just quibbling and you know it – wait. Two possible outcomes? What the hell are you talking about?”

Whether it was John’s tired mind getting the better of him or perhaps Sherlock’s weariness catching up with him, whatever the case it could not be denied that Sherlock had hesitated ever so slightly before answering, or that he did so without looking up to meet John’s eyes. “It’s simple: if things do happen to deviate from our plan, which they _won’t_ , but if they do and something unfortunate is to happen to whoever is serving as the “bait”, of the two of us you are the one most able to carry on successfully without the other. There’s nothing altruistic about my insistence that I be the one to confront the killer, it’s the most practical solution that minimizes the risk most effectively. Simple.”

Was it that surprising that John had been so utterly lost for words just then? He should have continued arguing, should have found another way to convince Sherlock that he didn’t need to throw his life away just for the sake of catching one killer, but the words and the will had been stolen from him by Sherlock’s quiet speech and the implications that lay behind it. It didn’t make any _sense_ , and the unsettled confusion that conversation had brought him stayed with John throughout the rest of the evening and nagged at him like a wound not properly healed until at last he could take it no longer.

Of course that moment when he could not bear the silence of not knowing had come at the worst possible time, after John had finally argued Sherlock into bed last night for some much needed sleep and they lay side by side and yet so far apart in the darkness. This and every other night they spent together, the minutes between consciousness and blissful oblivion when nothing more than a few centimeters of space and a chasm of distance separated them, those brief spans of time were at once the most wonderful and trying times of John’s day. Wonderful, yes, because of the quiet closeness that he could tell himself they shared in the dark even when no words were spoken, and yet terrible all the same for it. At night, when the lights were out and barriers were lowered, it was so very easy to forget everything that had happened and pretend just for a moment that the man next to him breathing gently into the silence was there by choice. That at any moment a pair of warm arms, strong and tender and heavy with affection would wrap around him and pull him close to keep the nightmares at bay. The fierce warmth that spread through him at the thought only made the realization that they would not sting all the worse.

But that night was different, in feeling and anticipation and well…everything. As John kept himself carefully on his side of the bed while Sherlock huddled over on his, his thoughts were not on the tantalizingly short distance between them or just how he would have to shift his body for the tiniest brush of contact. No, on that night he could not help but think again and again in agonizing detail on what Sherlock had said and the things he had not, the quietness of his voice and the downcast turn of his eyes, on nothing and everything that had him wide awake despite the exhaustion that weighed down on him. And so even though their unspoken and unbroken rule was that of absolute silence once the lights had been turned out, John could not help but give voice to the question that gnawed at him in the dark reaches of the night.

“Sherlock? Can I ask you something?”

A frustrated and impatient sigh answered him, huffed out against the wall in exasperation. “John you are the one who insists on me sleeping so many hours when I don’t need to, so whatever the reason is for you breaking your own rules I can only hope that it is _very_ important.”

“I need to know what you meant earlier.”

“I am not going over the plan one more time, if you haven’t got it by now –“

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant…I need to know what you were talking about when you said that, that’d I’d be the one who’d be able to carry on without you. What did you mean?”

Even in the dark, even though John had his back to Sherlock as he stared out into the darkness of the flat, even still he could feel the sudden shift in tension that his question caused. All of the noise of the outside world, the ever-present hum of traffic and the buzz that came with living in the heart of a city such as London, it vanished in an instant. Everything melted away, leaving John and Sherlock and the silence of an unanswered question in its wake.

“I thought it was obvious,” Sherlock murmured at last, so quiet that his words were nearly lost to the waiting air.

“Not to me.”

“It was straightforward enough, as I said if something were to happen to one of us, you would clearly be the most able to…carry on with your life with minimal effects. Look at you – you’re a war hero, a doctor, a man with a place in the community and a life to get back to. Not only would that life continue without me in it, evidence suggests that it would be far better without me to care for. Whereas I am a drug-addicted former prostitute with aspirations of being a detective who cannot go a few weeks without, as you so eloquently put it, “almost ODing in a fucking alleyway” without you to keep me alive. It’s obvious who would be better off alone.”

In the silence that followed, John honestly could not decide whether he wanted to laugh, scream, cry, or maybe find some new wild expression of everything he felt and everything he could not say. He could not believe what he had heard, that Sherlock had said it, and that, worst of all, Sherlock believed it. That he seemed to honestly think John would be able to shrug off his loss and move on, that his life would be no more affected by Sherlock’s death at the hands of a serial killer than it would be by the departure of a particularly needy pet. Anger, or perhaps it was sadness, or perhaps both, surged through him to fill his chest and constrict his throat, burning hot and raw and ragged inside him. How _dare_ Sherlock be so selfish to throw his life away like that after everything they had been through? How could he?

Breaking yet another unspoken rule of their delicately maintained bed-sharing treaty, John had turned over in an explosion of motion and a flurry of blankets to face the center of the bed and glare angrily at the long lines of Sherlock’s back. “You’re wrong,” he spat.” And you’re an idiot.”

Evidently the sudden tidal wave of motion and the angry accusation that had been flung at him were enough to rouse Sherlock from his stubborn contemplation of the wall he stared at every evening, if not quite enough to  convince him to roll over and face John. Propping himself up slightly on one elbow he looked over his shoulder, eyebrow raised in that particular mixture of curiosity and scorn that should really not make John’s heart skip the way it did. “I beg your pardon?”

But flutters of undefined emotion notwithstanding, John was not to be distracted now. Not with the tide of anger/sadness/frustration that was rising in him or the need that was driving him, the need to just make that idiotic genius _understand_ what he could not see. “You really think that I would be just fine if something happened to you tomorrow? Sherlock, when we first met I wasn’t any of the things you just said. I wasn’t…God I wasn’t _anything_. I was empty, just floating through space and existing, and I know that you saw it that first night so don’t try and tell me otherwise. You’re the only reason I went and got a job again, the only reason I did anything, hell I think you’re the only reason I’m still alive right now. You know all those times you’ve asked why I’ve spent so much time trying to help you? To save you? Well the truth, the real truth is that it’s because you saved me first. So don’t you dare be so selfish to think that you can just run off and get yourself killed and that there won’t be any consequences, because it’s just not true.”

Not even the half-lit gloom of a room illuminated only by the streetlights outside it could obscure the surprise that had overtaken Sherlock’s face as John spoke, nor the brief confusion that followed before it was swiftly smoothed away. If John were a poetic man, something that he could never even attempt to say, he would have said that he could see the gears spinning in a mind that had been stalled in place, frozen by the information that it had just encountered and not yet been able to process. But as John had no true pretensions of poetry or even of eloquence he could claim no such visions. Instead he simply saw a man made vulnerable by surprise, a man who had not entertained the possibility of the truth he had just heard until this very moment. But just as John could see that Sherlock had been blindsided by the unexpected honesty he had just received, he could see just as plainly that there would be no more conversation from him tonight. Whatever small moment of closeness they had shared was gone, and there would be no getting it back.

With a sigh, John rolled back over to face away from Sherlock once more, listening to the soft rustle of blankets as Sherlock lowered himself back down with back turned and walls in place. No more talking then. That was the way of things. “Now come on, we need sleep. I know you’re not tired, but at least give it a go. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

But despite the silence, despite the stoic refusal to address something so unnecessary as feelings, despite it all John could not help but think now around the pounding of his heart and the terror in his soul that just maybe, Sherlock had understood. It was crazy to think that Sherlock was acting differently now as he stood waiting for a serial killer with an affected nonchalance that he certainly did not feel because of one fragmented conversation in the dark and yet…

Madness it may very well be, but John could not help but think that Sherlock was approaching their little adventure with a touch more seriousness, more care, and more caution than he had been before. After that night, no longer did he casually and flippantly reference the many ways in which this plan could go so disastrously wrong, nor did he roll his eyes with impatience every time John went back to cover their safety precautions one last time. He had even agreed to take John’s cell phone with him just in case of some unforeseen disaster, restraining himself to only quiet grumbling about the uselessness of a phone when John did not have one he could call. It wasn’t much in the way of comfort in the grand scheme of things, but at least it was something.

And perhaps, just perhaps it would be more than something. Perhaps John’s words born of frustration and worry would be enough to turn the tide tonight, the whisper of caution that when added to Sherlock’s genius would be enough to get them through to the other side safe and sound. Maybe that was the key – razor sharp mind and steady hand working as one to bring about the impossible. If there was anyone at all who could pull this insanity off, it was them. And just like that for the first time since they had begun, as his heart thumped and his legs burned watching Sherlock stand still and alone across the way, John began to hope that it might just work.

Until it didn’t.

Until a wave of people from God only knew where surged forward to block Sherlock from John’s view, hiding him behind a sea of hurrying faces and blithely ignorant fools who had no idea the damage they could cause. John’s heart leapt to his throat as thirty long seconds passed where Sherlock was completely out of his sight and anything could happen. Long distant echoes of shouts and explosions and the memory of too much sand and blood came roaring back all at once, freezing him through with indecision and terror.

_Oh God. Oh God this could be it. This could be what he was waiting for, the moment when it all goes wrong. But I can’t move from this spot, if the killer is here and runs because he saw me it’ll all be for nothing and it’ll be my fault. But if something happens it’ll be my fault. What do I do? What –_

At last, at _last_ when John was on the verge of throwing caution to the winds and leaping from the hiding spot he had been in for so very long, the freakish tidal wave of pedestrians passed. And to his enormous and nearly heart-stopping relief, Sherlock was just where John had last seen him looking no worse the wear for his brief disappearance from sight. Yes, he was exactly where he had been, standing on the street corner with hands in his pockets, back to John as he leaned forward slightly to talk to whoever was in the black cab that was parked in front of him.

_Wait, what?_

Of all the ways that John had envisioned this adventure going wrong, in all the waking nightmares he had suffered and horrible fantasies that had plagued him, he had never imagined this. He had never dreamed that he would be paralyzed by the blinding succession of emotions that battered him, never thought that he would sit in horrified silence as he watched Sherlock dash their plan to pieces and approach the cab that had appeared from nowhere like some sort of terrible phantom. And he had never, ever dreamed that he would have to watch from afar as the man he had sworn to protect reached out to open the door.

Forgetting himself, forgetting the plan, forgetting everything John leapt to his feet, knocking over rubbish bins and gaining more than a few startled stares in the process. Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl that left him helpless, able to do nothing but stare in horror as Sherlock disappeared with a swirl of his coat into the dark depths of the waiting cab. A shout echoed around him, raw and desperate, and only afterwards did John realize that it was his own.

“Sherlock!”

But it was for nothing. His scream was swallowed by the night, vanishing into the uncaring wind as the door slammed, the engine revved, and the cab pulled off into the darkness.

Sherlock was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

The ten seconds that passed as John stood watching the small black cab that carried Sherlock away from him into the night were the longest of his entire life. The title had previously been held by the brief, nightmarish time that had passed in between a bullet entering his shoulder and consciousness slipping from him, a time filled with more terror and pain than John cared to remember and yet could never hope to forget. But this was a different kind of terror, and a different kind of pain, and even though he was immobilized by nothing more than his own mind and was not feeling his life drain from him onto scorching desert sands it was just as real. It was no longer just about him, about the loss of his own life and what that might mean, now it was about Sherlock. The man he had given so much to protect, the man to whom he owed so much, the man who was currently speeding away from him into the depths of London to face an almost certain death.

What should he do? What _could_ he do? And why the bloody hell had Sherlock gotten into that cab in the first place? It wasn’t any part of the plan they had spent so many hours checking and re-checking, the one that Sherlock had been so certain would be foolproof and that John had been crazy enough to go along with. Sherlock had assured him time and again that he would never even speak to the killer, insisting that he would stay safely hidden in the crowds of a busy London sidewalk while he gathered all the information they would need to identify their target. But what was John supposed to do now that things had gone so terribly off the rails and Sherlock had vanished?

Shaking himself out of the momentary paralysis that had seized him, John sprang into action and dashed out of the relative safety of his alleyway hiding place to run after the disappearing cab. There was no way he could hope to outrun a moving vehicle, not even in the congestion of a London commute, but at the very least he could catch the cab number or the license plate or _something_ to help him find it again. But even though he pushed and shoved his way through the crowds that blocked his path, elbows flying, feet stumbling, the distance was too great. An ocean of passersby stretched out before him as the tiny figure of the cab pulled ever away, shrinking into the night as it approached the corner.

There was no time to pause now, no matter how shocked John was or how slow and sluggish his brain felt trying to keep up with everything that was happening. Catching the cab on foot was out of the question, so his only chance would be to get a cab of his own in this madness and pray that it would be able to track them down. He flung out his arm in wild desperation, precious seconds ticking by as car after car moved past him without showing any signs of stopping. _Finally_ a passing cab began to slow, navigating its way through the traffic to pull up next to where John stood waving his arms like a madman. Even before it had come to a full stop John wrenched open the back door and threw himself inside, earning yet more stares and a muffled cry of surprise and confusion from the cabbie within. Slamming the door shut behind him John leaned forward as far as the glass partition would allow.

“Can you follow that cab? Now?”

The cabbie caught none of his urgency however, glancing back at him with a bemused expression on his face. “Which one, mate? There’s loads.”

“Can’t you see it, that one right…”

But even as John gestured towards the corner where the cab carrying Sherlock had been, his heart plummeted. It was gone, off to God only knew where, and while John had been caught up with the business of procuring his own cab it had disappeared along with his only chance of ever finding it again. Now he was stuck here with no phone, no way of contacting Sherlock whatsoever, and no hope. He had nothing.

“Shit. Shit shit _shit_.” John could feel the cabbie’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror, narrowing with the suspicion that he had let a lunatic into his car, and so instead of letting out the string of blistering expletives that were building inside him, he pulled in a deep breath that did nothing to calm his nerves and did his best to imitate the man he was trying to find. All he had to do was stop, breathe, and _think_. “Ok listen, this is really important. Really, _really_ important. Is it possible for you to find a cab in the city if I give you its cab number? Can you track it down somehow?”

“No. Sorry mate, but I work independently so I barely even know who the other cabbies are much less how to find them.” He turned around to look at John, distrust written all over his face. “What d’you need to find a cab for anyhow?”

John didn’t answer, too busy running through idea after idea looking for ways to find Sherlock. They couldn’t follow the cab through the city, the cab number was useless, he didn’t even have a bloody _phone_ to call Sherlock with much less do anything fancier –

“Wait, wait a minute. I need to borrow your phone, just for a minute. Please, it’s important.”

“What, no way pal! I’m not giving you my bloody phone!”

“Listen I just need it for a minute ok, and I _promise_ I’m not going anywhere with it,” John all but begged. “God you can lock me in the cab if you like and start driving wherever you want, just let me make a phone call, _please_.”

“What the hell do you need my phone for anyway, just use yours you weirdo. And listen if you’re not going anywhere you’re gonna have to get out so a real customer can get in –“

“It’s police business, alright?” John lied desperately, options and time both running short. “I’m a detective with the Met and I’m in the middle of chasing a dangerous killer, so if you don’t let me use your phone right bleeding now you’ll be charged with obstructing a police investigation, do you want that? Hmm?”

The cabbie frowned at him, and John’s heart sank. It was a ridiculous lie, a long shot so absurd and so patently false that he didn’t even know why he tried it, but what other option did he have? _Most_ of what he’d said was true, barring a few glaring details, and if he’d tried to actually explain what was going on he’d have sounded like an even bigger lunatic than he already did. His only hope was that the man sitting two feet away from him would take the leap of faith that John was actually who he said he was, and that his sense of civic duty was not only intact but strong enough to lend out his phone for the cause of catching a killer.

_Please don’t ask to see my badge, please don’t question it, please believe me, please please please –_

“So if I give you my phone I’ll be helping you catch a murderer, is that it?”

Sudden hope leapt in John’s chest, and it took all he had to maintain some semblance of calm and not leap out of his seat as well. “Yes, yes that’s right. My partner got separated from me and I think the killer has him, so I need to track him down right now to keep anything from happening. This is life or death.”

Brown eyes locked with blue, suspicion meeting bleakest desperation, until at last, with an exhausted sigh and a shake of his head, he relented. “Oh, fine. But I’m locking the doors so you can’t run out on me and wherever you end up going I’m gonna charge you double for special services.”

“Yes, fine, that’s fine. Give me the phone. Now.”

When the somewhat battered flip phone was finally dug out of the cabbie’s pockets and handed through the sliding window John dialed his own number with shaking fingers and heart in his throat, praying that Sherlock hadn’t been stupid enough to turn the thing off in protest. Thankfully the call did not immediately get sent to voicemail like he had feared, ringing in time with the beating of John’s heart.

One

Two

Three –

Mid-ring, when the fear of what an unanswered phone might mean had begun to sneak its way into John’s min, the too-loud ringing cut off sharply as the call connected. John could swear that he felt his heart stop mid-beat as well, skipping painfully within him as he listened for a familiar voice on the other end greeting him and telling him what an idiot he was for getting worked up into such a state. But there was no gravelly hello, no drawl of scorn or derision, nothing at all but silence punctuated by the muffled and distant hum of traffic in the background.

“Sherlock?” John asked, struggling to keep the panic out of his voice, “Sherlock are you there? Listen, if you can hear me and everything’s ok just say something, alright? I just need to know where you are, please just say something, anything if you can. Sherlock? Sherlock –“

The call ended with a soft click.

“All done, mate?” the cabbie asked, clearly impatient to get this strange fare on his way.

But John was too busy staring at the phone in confusion and no little horror, watching the blinking call time icon that read a dismal 19 seconds. Why hadn’t Sherlock said anything? What could have possibly happened to him to make it so that he couldn’t speak – was he tied up? Hurt? Unconscious? But if any of those were the case he wouldn’t have been able to answer the phone or hang it up again, so what reason could he possibly have had for picking up without speaking?

The phone buzzed in John’s hands, startling him so badly that he nearly dropped it. But it wasn’t a phone call back like he so hoped it might be, but a text message instead, a text message from John’s own phone number.

_In cab Cornet if up minragu Nd crWgird hedig sth_

“What?” John asked aloud, reading and re-reading the text message that didn’t even come close to making anything like sense. Well the first part made sense, but why had Sherlock ended it with gibberish? What the hell was he trying to say?

The cabbie had clearly run out of patience a good while ago and by now was looking for the quickest way to get John out of his cab and as far away from him as possible. “Listen mate, I have business to do so if you’re just going to stare at my phone like that you’re gonna have to get out and find someone else to hijack –“

“Wait! I’ve got it!” John interrupted, understanding flooding through him sharp and wonderful. “Ok, he must have answered the phone in his pocket, that’s why there was all that muffled noise but he didn’t say anything. So whoever he’s with, he doesn’t want them to know that we’re in contact. That means…that means he’s texting in his pocket too, which is why it’s all garbled and messed up like that. What is he trying to say though, what’s he trying to tell me…”

He stared at the tiny words on the screen, eyes running over them again and again as he tried to puzzle out their meaning. “Cornet, cornet…oh, corner! It’s a typo of corner, which means…oh yes so “if” must be “of”, which makes it corner of! Of course, he’s giving me their location with cross streets so we can follow, oh you brilliant bastard. So that’s corner of, of, oh damn it I can’t tell what they are. Hey do you know these streets?”

John held the phone up to the partition, and after a long moment when the cabbie seemed to be debating whether or not he really wanted to keep going along with this lunacy he turned around to look at the screen with a distrustful glare. The glare only deepened as he looked at the words on the screen of his phone, the suspicion that John might actually be a lunatic written all over his face. “What are you joking? Those ain’t words.”

“Didn’t you hear me? He had to type in his pocket, that’s why they’re all messed up. But they’re streets, I know they are, so just actually _try_ for a bleeding second, will you? It’s like a puzzle, one of those word scramble things but with the letters of streets around here messed up. Just try, please. My fr – partner’s life depends on it.”

The suspicion remained as strong as ever, but when it became clear that John wasn’t going to give up any time soon he sighed and craned his neck around to peer in close at the screen. His eyes narrowed slightly as he read the scrambled words, and when he did not respond right away John’s heart sank that this would all be for nothing. But at last he nodded, saying slowly, “Well, I dunno, but if they’re streets near here then that first one could be Upper Montagu maybe. Which could make the second Crawford cuz there’s an intersection a few streets down –“

“That’s it!” John interrupted, too excited to let him keep speaking. “Well come on, what are you waiting for? Go! Go there and keep heading south, and I’ll have to wait to see if he texts again.”

With a grumble and a groan the cabbie reluctantly complied, shifting the car out of idle and slowly but surely weaving his way back into the disaster that was London traffic in the evening. The slow pace with which they crawled their way forward was infuriating, as it felt to John as though he could have walked to his destination faster without being forced to stop and wait every few meters over and over. But in all honesty it was a miracle that they were moving at all, likely owed to the prodigious driving skills of the man in the front seat and the astonishing aggressiveness he used to push his way through the lines of automobiles blocking their way. So even though John was very nearly vibrating out of his own skin with desperation to just go _faster_ , he resisted the temptation to give up, jump out of the cab, and make his own way on foot.

And after all, as good as John liked to believe his sense of direction was, he wouldn’t have had the slightest clue where to begin looking for the crossings of Upper Montagu and Crawford. Without the cabbie he had bullied into taking him, John would be lost in five minutes and he knew it. If he wanted to find Sherlock, as aggravating as it was, he was just going to have to hurry up and wait.

“Alright mate, we’re just about there,” the cabbie said a few minutes later as they rounded a corner. “Upper Montagu and Crawford up ahead. What d’you want me to do?”

John looked down at the phone, cursing its blank screen and running through his limited list of options. _What would Sherlock do in my place? What is he doing right now? He said they were heading south, but they might have turned or stopped and if we keep going we’ll be miles away. What do I do?_

“Um, keep going south on Montagu for now. That’s what he said and it’s all we have to go on so it’ll have to do for now.”

A buzz, sudden and startling, sounded in the quiet cab as the small screen came to life. “Wait, wait hold on! I’ve got another one from him, let’s see, it says…um…”

_Mont and srynor hed est_

Gibberish again, but John knew the game now and immediately began to pore over the garbled words to pick apart the meaning that was hidden there. They were clearly street names again, and the repetition of Montagu made half the puzzle easy enough, but the second street that they were evidently heading east on was a mystery to him. But thankfully a quick glance down at the keyboard of the phone he was using to check the layout of the keys for likely typos was enough to guide him through, and after only a few minutes of frustrated silence the puzzle clicked into place.

“Keep going on Montagu, then turn onto Seymour and head east. Go.”

And so they went. Inching their way through the maze that called itself a city, making slow and agonizing progress at the whim of sporadic text messages and spotty information, John followed the trail of electronic breadcrumbs that Sherlock was leaving for him. There was no pattern that John could discern in how often the texts were sent or what landmark they would head for next, and the intervals between the buzzing of the phone were enough to drive him mad with anxiety. What if this text was the last? How would he know whether Sherlock’s cab had stopped or if something worse had happened? But no matter how terrifying those possibilities were there was nothing he could do about them now, and his best chance of ever seeing Sherlock alive again was to continue on with this ridiculous game and pray that it would be enough.

The city lights blazed into life around them as they made their way south and east, weaving in and out of the ever present flow of traffic that was the lifeblood of the city’s beating heart. They were deep in central London now, moving past soaring skyscrapers and bustling centers of commerce that hummed with life. Families went on outings together, business people made their way home for the evening, young people high on life and adventure and endless possibility went out into the night in search of the freedom that a good time could bring, all blissfully unaware of the darkness that lingered on the edges of the city they lived in. They had no idea, none of them, the drama that played out all around them, just out of sight and successfully out of mind to those who never bothered to look closer.

As John passed them by, alone and apart in his island of frazzled silence amidst the crowds, he could not help but wonder briefly what it might be like to be one of those people on the other side of the glass. To be normal, to be happy, to be safe. But even as he wondered, his attention flickering from the danger for just a moment, he knew the answer even before he had finished asking the question. He had been normal and safe just a few months ago, back before the madness of his own devising had turned his life upside down. And he had been the furthest thing from happy possible. Let the others sit comfortably in their stable and uninteresting lives – there had never been anything for him other than this.

At last they broke through the jungle of buildings into the brief stretch of open sky that was allowed by the crossing of the river, the towering symbols of British majesty behind them faded into the night with no more pomp or circumstance than had been given to a lowly block of flats. They were in Southwark now according to the signs and John’s hazy mental map of the city, and his heart sank as they moved further into an area of the city that he had almost no familiarity with whatsoever. Monoliths of glass and steel loomed on either side along with the skeletons of unfinished buildings that would soon join their ranks, providing countless hideaways and empty places for someone who knew the city as well as this man evidently did. Flashes of dead bodies in lonely buildings came to mind, making John shudder at the thought of where they could be headed to add one more to their number. But thinking like that wouldn’t help Sherlock, nor would it give him courage, and he shook himself out of the grip of fear that was threatening to creep over him and re-focused himself at the task at hand.

When the phone buzzed again, one glance was enough to tell John that this text message would be the last.

_Here. 25 Soithwrk st_

His heart immediately beating in staccato time, he leaned forward to speak to the cabbie. “They’ve stopped. At 25 Southwark Street I think, can you get there?”

“If it’ll get you out of my cab mate, I’d go anywhere.”

Five tense and silent minutes passed as they neared their destination, until finally they slowed and came to a gradual stop. They were in an area slightly distanced from the bright lights of the larger buildings, and peering out the window John was not able to make out exactly what sort of place he had found himself. The cabbie seemed familiar with it however if his head shake and disbelieving chuckle were to be believed, and when he turned around the cruel smirk on his face did not reassure John one bit.

“Well, I’ll be having my phone and the fare now. The return trip is up to you, and God help the poor idiot you trick into taking you.”

Tearing his gaze away from the window John checked the phone one last time before handing it through the partition and rummaging quickly for his wallet. “Right. Of course. How much do I owe you?”

“It’s twenty quid for the ride, doubled as we agreed, plus a few surcharges for special services, so I think all together it’ll come out to a nice even fifty pounds. Cash, if you please.”

Stifling a protest at the outrageous fare John handed it over, leaving his wallet near empty in the process. “Here you are, that should be all of it. And thank you, for everything.”

“Whatever. Get the fuck out of my cab and never come back.”

John got out, and the moment the door slammed the cab roared off into the darkness, leaving him alone in front of an empty construction site.

Moving carefully and quietly as he could manage, John approached the building that Sherlock had indicated, and as he did his heart sank. The place was, well, terrifying to put it mildly, a half-finished hulk of a structure that looked like it would eventually contain high-end flats or something similar but for now sat behind its chain link fence as dark and deserted as a graveyard. The walls were standing but still remained only bare concrete, huge grey slabs yawning with row after row of empty spaces where the windows would eventually be placed. Sheets of plastic draped over the larger holes stirred fitfully in the slight evening breeze revealing the chaos of the uncompleted interior beyond, and no matter how desperately John craned his neck for any clue to where Sherlock might have gone there was no sign of a single living soul to be found. The effect of the empty worksite lit only by the unsteady glow of passing headlamps and dim streetlights was far too much like something out of a horror movie for John’s liking, but as gruesome a thought as it was he could not deny that if he had to choose a spot for a nice quiet murder this would be high on his list.

There was nothing for it then. Reaching his coat pocket for the gun that he could not be gladder to have with him, John took only a brief second to check that everything was in order before beginning his search. He had precious little time to spare, but losing just one soldier in a building raid because he hadn’t checked his gear properly had been enough to teach John the importance of equipment functioning when you needed it most. This was hardly any different from those house clearing missions a lifetime ago and half a world away, except this time John didn’t have a team of trained soldiers watching his back. No, this time he was about to make his way into a nearly pitch black building with an unknown layout and any number of possible enemies within, all completely alone.

So perhaps it wasn’t so much like Afghanistan then. A nightmare, perhaps – that seemed more fitting.

Summoning up his courage John moved forward towards the fence to look for a spot where he could climb, shoulder already twinging in anticipation of what it would cost him, but a closer look soon showed that it would not be necessary. There was a gate not far from where he stood and whether by means of a forgetful worker or some other means it was not only unlocked but standing ajar. He opened it cautiously in case a careless squeak revealed his presence but it swung open before him easily and he slipped into the empty yard beyond without a sound. Construction equipment and tools littered the dirt ground before him, casting monstrous shadows in the dim light and to his great discomfort providing altogether too much cover for any enemies that might be lying in wait.

Moving forward as quickly and stealthily as he could in a half crouch with gun held at the ready, John moved from cover to cover as he approached the entrance of the building with senses on high alert and nerves singing with fear. He half expected a bullet to come whistling out of one of those too-empty windows at any moment, but by some miracle he made it to the opening that would one day hold the front doors with no shots fired and no signs of detection. After a quick check inside and behind him he was in, and with his back to the unfinished wall he began his search. He had no idea where Sherlock might be in this cavernous building, but if he were the one who had kidnapped someone and taken them to an empty construction site to kill them, he would head for the upper floors. While it was true that there didn’t appear to be anyone here at this time of night, the likelihood of homeless people or reckless teenagers stumbling into this place was far too high to remain on the ground floor if others were available. And indeed just as he had suspected, far enough into the building that the lights from the outside were a distant memory that provided only the barest illumination, a concrete staircase not yet finished but still usable swam into view through the shadows. Checking behind him and through the openings that were on his left and right, John climbed up into the dark.

This floor was nearly pitch black, the only light coming from the occasional flash of headlights that happened to make their way through the fluttering tarps and boarded up window openings. John crept his way down the long hallway, keeping close to the wall and constantly scanning both ahead and behind for any signs of life or trace that there had been people here in the last hour. It was nearly impossible to tell whether or not the chaos all around was from a construction crew leaving at the end of a long day or something more sinister, and with every passing minute John felt his nerves ratchet even higher. The quiet was crushing in here, somehow magnified and enormous despite their proximity to a major street and the city that surrounded them on all sides. But something about the emptiness of this place, the isolation, the total disconnect from the civilized world beyond its walls turned a mere empty building into an island of silence and darkness. And in that silence, that empty void crawling with fears and unknown terrors, John could not help but flinch at every rustle of plastic or roar of an engine outside. His mind clamored to fill the blankness, searching for _anything_ other than nothingness that would lead him to his goal.

But then, John heard it.

“It’s chance. An even chance.”

A voice, _Sherlock’s_ voice, echoed faintly down the empty corridor through the shadows. His heart thudded painfully in his chest and he froze, shrinking against the wall with gun at the ready in case of detection, but even though he strained to see through the blackness there was no sign of anyone in the hall with him. The acoustics of the empty building must have thrown Sherlock’s voice to make him sound closer than he was, but at least now John knew that he was in the correct place after all and that he was closing in on his target. He crept forward as carefully and silently as he could, nerves on high alert as he peered through every doorway and edged his way down the hall in search of wherever Sherlock was.

At last he saw a faint glimmer of light coming from around a corner at the end of the hall, and he knew that he was drawing close to his goal. But just because he had found Sherlock didn’t mean that they were out of danger yet. There was a very real possibility that Sherlock was being held at gunpoint by a serial killer for some unknown ends, and if John went in with guns blazing the aftermath could be deadly. The last thing he needed was a gunfight with a murderer with Sherlock in the line of fire, especially with the man on the other side of the wall representing an absolutely unknown quantity in terms of weaponry and skill. No, this was going to take careful reconnaissance and finesse if they wanted to get out of here alive, much less unharmed.

Padding forward carefully John reached the corner and paused with his back pressed against the wall, waiting to see if he could hear anything that would help him form a plan of attack. Any sort of information would be better than the nothing he had right now, whether he could find out just how many people were in the room beyond or if they were armed or even if Sherlock was still functioning at full capacity. An unknown voice began to speak quietly, and when John strained to make out his words, his blood froze.

“Oh come now Mr. Holmes, it’s a game. It’s _chess_. Don’t you want to play?”

The tone was friendly and unassuming, but something about that strange voice sent chills of terror right through John. Behind the façade of cheer and the lighthearted nature of the words, the voice that spoke them was…empty. Cold. Dead. With a certainty that would have startled him had he the time to think about it John knew that the man who was in that room with Sherlock was evil, and worse, he had nothing to live for. He was a man with a death wish, and he was going to take down as many people with him as he could before he went.

“Come on then, what do you think? Can you beat me? I can tell that you’re clever Mr. Holmes, very clever, even when you’ve gotten yourself in a state like this. Care to give it a try?”

“There’s no point, it’s just chance. Even if I am right, it’ll just be luck.”

The sound of Sherlock speaking without any sign of pain or duress was enough to nearly make John’s knees weak, but something in his voice gave him pause. There was an odd note in the way Sherlock was speaking, a tremor of tension and strain that jangled harshly on John’s hearing and set his internal warning bells ringing. Something was wrong here, very wrong.

“It must be horrible, isn’t it, living in a world like this without the drugs to make it worthwhile? Don’t you get bored now with nothing to distract you? Well here’s a distraction for you, the best distraction you’ll ever find.”

There was a pause, and when the man spoke again his voice was low and seductive, rich with wheedling temptation and promise. “The addiction never really leaves you, does it? And it’s not even about the drugs anymore, not really – it’s about _this_. The rush of just before, the trembling, the _need_ , oh it feels like flying doesn’t it? You need this, I could see it written all over you when you got in my cab that you’d want to play my little game. You couldn’t ever do anything else but this.”

John’s vision went red. It wasn’t fear that filled him now; it was fury, hot and strong coursing through his body to hear that monster pulling Sherlock down into the darkness with him. Abandoning caution and throwing sense to the winds he readied his gun and stepped round the corner in one smooth motion, advancing without hesitation into the empty room beyond.

What he saw there was horrifying. Standing like illuminated statues in the middle of the barren room were Sherlock and a strange man, mirroring each other in complementary poses frozen in time. The stranger was small and utterly non-threatening at first glance, a man with graying hair and rumpled clothes who could have passed for someone’s grandfather in any other situation. But one look at the expression of delighted malice on his face as he stared fixedly at Sherlock, the utter lack of anything resembling humanity in his eyes, the wicked and triumphant smile that lit him with demonic glee, and John knew that this was not a man he was dealing with but a monster.

But far more terrifying still was the sight of Sherlock frozen in indecision with a pill held up to his mouth. In the split second of calm that reigned as John stepped forward from the darkness, the cool and collected part of his brain that had taken over registered that Sherlock was shaking, fingers trembling as they held the white pill in unsteady grip mere centimeters from his open mouth. His eyes were wide and wild, lit with the desperation of need and the pain of denial, burning with that same fire from all those nights ago that had not yet been extinguished. The Sherlock before John now was on the brink of collapse, teetering on the edge of falling off the cliff they had struggled so hard to climb in the face of so much adversity. Their eyes met across the room, Sherlock’s widening with surprise around his agony, and in that instant, John knew what he had to do.

“Sherlock, duck.”

Time sped up once more, everything coming together and bursting into chaos as one. The man who had been angled slightly away from John turned, just now tearing his attention away from his prey long enough to register the presence of another person in the room. His eyes narrowed and his free hand moved to the pocket of his sweater to grope blindly for what John could clearly see was the outline of a pistol. With a quick check to make sure that Sherlock had indeed listened for once in his life and gotten himself out of the line of fire, John aimed his gun for the man’s chest, breathed out, and pulled the trigger.

The gun sounded, and the man dropped like a stone.

Silence rushed in to fill deafening emptiness left by the explosion of the pistol, echoing hugely throughout the empty building. A pool of blood was spreading slowly on the floor beneath the man that John had just shot, seeping out sluggishly to stain the concrete an ugly crimson. There was no trace of movement anywhere in the room, neither from John as he stood watching the man to make sure that he was well and truly neutralized, nor from Sherlock where he lay in shock on the floor. Finally, after several long seconds, John lowered the gun and took his finger off the trigger, turning his attention from the man he had killed to the one he had saved.

Striding across the room, John stepped over the body that lay in a slowly seeping pool of blood to stand in front of Sherlock. His brain appeared to finally be restarting itself and he hurried to stand up, scrambling from the floor to his unsteady feet while staring at the corpse of the man who had taken him all the while. That was to be expected, but fury spiked in John once more as his quick visual inspection of Sherlock to check for injuries revealed that he was still clutching the pill tightly in his fist. Despite everything that had just happened he had not let go of that damn pill, and it didn’t look like he was going to any time soon.

Sticking out his hand with open and upturned palm, John ordered, “Give me that. Give me that right now.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, still staring with narrowed eyes at the body on the ground as though he were trying to pick it apart with his gaze alone. His mind was a million miles away from what John had just said, and after everything that had just happened that fact was enough to make John snap.

“I said give me the fucking pill!”

His shout bounced off the concrete walls of the empty room, startling Sherlock out of his paralysis. He looked over slowly, still clutching the pill in his right hand with shaking fingers and white knuckles, until finally with obvious reluctances and great difficulty he slowly handed it over. John snatched it away furiously, turning and tossing it into the darkness where it skittered away with a tiny clatter.

“You idiot. You bloody idiot, what the hell were you thinking?”

“John I –“ he tried to answer, but John cut him off before he could start rationalizing or apologizing away what he had done.

“No, you know what, don’t even answer that. Don’t even try to fucking answer that because whatever you say will be a lie because you _weren’t_ thinking, were you? You didn’t even stop to think for one second when you got in that cab and left me behind, and you didn’t think when you had that damn pill up to your mouth either. Everything we’ve been through, everything I’ve done, and you didn’t even bother to think what you leaving me behind like that would do, how dangerous it was, what could happen. You just went and you did it, just like you do everything. You selfish _prick_.”

“I –“

“We were going to do this together, Sherlock! The only reason I agreed to your stupid plan in the first place is because you told me, you _promised_ that I’d be right there with you the whole time. ‘I’ll never leave your sight’, you said, ‘You can protect me the whole time’. And then what’s the first thing you bloody well do? You say fuck the plan, fuck him, and you just jump in a cab with a serial killer and leave me sitting like a tit in an alleyway with no way to find you! How could you do that to me? How _could_ you?”

“Because I knew that I could win!”

Sherlock’s shout echoed to match the ones that had come before, and this time it was John who was startled into sudden silence. He had no idea what kind of answer he had been expecting as he ranted, but it certainly hadn’t been _that_ and now he was at a loss for how to respond. Slowly, struggling to process the meaning behind Sherlock’s frustrated words, he asked, “What do you mean, you knew that you could win? How could you possibly know that?”

“You’re right, this isn’t how we planned this. I didn’t want this to happen, and right up until he pulled up next to me in that cab I was going to stick to what we had decided. But he knew who I was and he found me, and when he was speaking to me in his cab I knew that it would be my only chance. And I knew that I could beat him.”

His eyes were wide and focused only on John, staring at him with laser intensity as though to convince John of the sincerity of what he said. Had he been anyone else John might have thought that he was begging to be believed, throwing everything he had into this one statement in a desperate bid for trust and understanding. But this was Sherlock and he did no such thing as begging over something as trivial as emotions or trust – and yet even still John could not help but feel his anger ebb just slightly despite his determination.

But that did not mean he was ready to let go of his point just yet, no matter how persuasive a sincere Sherlock might be. “That’s still no reason to go off on your own like that and leave me behind. It was a stupid risk, Sherlock, a selfish stupid risk that you had no right to take.”

“John you – God you just can’t possibly understand, can you?” Sherlock burst out, frustration taking over as he broke eye contact to turn and pace frantically. “You have no idea what it’s been like, no matter how caring or empathetic you think you are. Ever since I stopped using, ever since that first night when I craved it and couldn’t have it, I’ve been tearing myself to pieces. My brain won’t stop, it _can’t_ stop, not ever, and cocaine was the only thing that made it bearable. Every day it feels like I’m going to go mad without anything to take its place, and when that man was speaking to me and I knew without a doubt that I could beat him, it was the first time in weeks that I didn’t want to die to make it all stop.”

He stopped mid-stride, turning to face John with eyes gone bright with unfamiliar feeling. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? I had to do this, alone. I had to do this to prove that I still could, that I can be _something_ without the drugs that will make life worth living. And having the challenge, the thrill, the danger, it made me feel alive again. Don’t you understand?”

John sighed, running a free hand through his hair and struggling to pull together the emotions that warred within him. “I want to understand, Sherlock, and I think I might. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have that need, like you need to do _anything_ to feel alive even if it’s something stupid. I get it. But leaving me behind like that, going off on your own, don’t _you_ understand how selfish that was? Anything could have happened and it would be my fault for letting it, all because you ran away from me without waiting for me or leaving me any way to follow.”

“But I knew that you’d find me.”

The air rushed out of John’s lungs at Sherlock’s words, and the anger drained from him as well, and he knew in that exact moment that this simple statement meant far more than the words themselves. He locked eyes with Sherlock across the distance that had somehow narrowed in the space of an instant, and saw nothing but honesty there.

“How could you possibly know that?” he asked, afraid of the answer and yet unable to do anything but discover it.

“You always find me. Out of all the millions of people in this city, in all the endless possibilities and variations, you have _always_ found me, John. Do you know how often I’ve thought back to that night, that first night when we met? I’ve tried to make sense of it, to rationalize it, to sort it out with numbers and probabilities and with everything I try it makes even less sense. What were the odds, do you think, of me choosing that particular street corner that night, and of your cab taking you there? What about you picking that particular night, that exact time when I would be on the street? What were the odds of you even choosing me in the first place?”

“I could never have chosen anyone but you,” John whispered, and they were the truest words he had ever spoken.

“Do you see, John?” Sherlock asked as he stepped forward to close the distance between them, and this time it could not be denied that his eyes were begging John to understand. “It’s improbable, _impossible_ , but I don’t think either you or I can imagine our lives going any other way. And it’s all because you find me, again and again. Even when I don’t want you too, even I run away and shoot myself up with so much cocaine I almost drown in it just so I can forget you, you still find me. Why should this time have been any different?”

“All this time, the whole time we’ve been doing…whatever it is that we’re doing, you’ve always been pulling away from me. Even when I’m trying to save your damn life you’ve been pulling away, but this time you risked your life on a guess that I’d be able to track you down? You really believed that?”

“It wasn’t a guess. As I’ve been made painfully aware these last few weeks, you won’t let anything stand in your way when you’ve got half a mind to do something. Not even when I’m the one in your way. A little cab ride wasn’t going to stop you.”

“What are we doing, Sherlock?” John asked, the question falling unbidden from his lips at what was quite possibly the worst time for it to be asked. But it was a question that needed to be asked more than any other, and if John was going to have any peace of mind ever again it was one that needed to be resolved. The memory of how poorly every other attempt to define their relationship to one another had gone made his heart thud painfully in his chest, and with a start John realized he was more nervous to hear this answer than he had been all evening.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “I should think it’s fairly obvious –“

“No, not right now. Not tonight. Not even this week. I mean, well what I’m trying to ask is, what are we…hell, what _are_ we? What am I to you? You just said that you put your life on the line because you knew me well enough to be sure I’d come for you. I just killed a man to save you. We’ve been to hell and back and I still don’t know how you feel, or even if you do feel anything. You’re right, I absolutely will move heaven and earth to help you if you need it, but I don’t know if I can go on not knowing –“

“John, I’m not certain this is the right time to discuss this,” Sherlock interrupted, eyes flicking away from John’s to glance quickly out the window.

The sight of his apparent impatience with what John considered to be one of the more important questions of his entire life brought the annoyance rushing right back. Did Sherlock seriously still not care? “Oh come off it, don’t do that now! We’ve been dancing around this for weeks but I’m sick of it! I’m not going to let you avoid it or me anymore, we need to talk about this.”

“While I agree that we do perhaps need to have a discussion soon, what I take issue with is that right _now_ is not the best time to do it. You fired your gun five minutes ago, which means that the police are undoubtedly on their way. Unless you want to have this talk of yours in a jail cell tonight, I suggest that we cut the conversation and leave.”

“Oh, shit.” John’s heart sank like a stone, realization of exactly what he had done and the trouble they were in crashing down on him. All at once he fancied that he could hear sirens closing in, and a cold sweat of fear broke out over his entire body at the repercussions that they would soon face. “Shit, what are we going to do? The police won’t know that he’s the killer, they’re just going to think he’s some poor bloke that got murdered. We don’t have any evidence or anything, he’s just dead.”

For some maddening reason Sherlock didn’t look anywhere near as worried about the situation as John was. In fact, he looked positively calm about the whole thing, possibly even verging into gleeful. A strange smile played over his face as he dug into the pocket of his overcoat, and with a theatrical flourish that was entirely inappropriate considering the circumstances he brought out John’s phone. “Wonderful things, smartphones. They can do so much these days: send texts, take pictures, use GPS, and they can even, in the rare event that you need them to, record conversations.”

He quirked an eyebrow and paused for maximum effect while John stood staring at him thoroughly nonplussed, until finally he pressed an icon that John couldn’t make out on the screen. A tinny voice echoed through the room, faint and difficult to make out and yet unmistakably that of the man that John had just killed.

_…a good bottle and a bad bottle. You take the pill from the good bottle, you live, you take the pill from the bad bottle, you die…_

Sherlock paused the recording and held up a finger before John could interrupt, scrolling to the side before hitting play once more.

_For every life I take, money goes to my kids. The more I kill, the better off they’ll be._

“I do think that should be rather sufficient evidence, don’t you?” he asked with a smirk as he turned off and pocketed the phone, obviously waiting for John’s approval for what he had done.

John stared at Sherlock for a second in surprise before huffing out a laugh, and in his delight at Sherlock’s brilliance he forgot himself and the careful walls and distance he had been maintaining for so long. “Sherlock, I could bloody kiss you.”

Embarrassment filled him at the slip of his unruly tongue, but before he could retract what he had said or write it off as a joke, a sudden, wicked light came into Sherlock’s eyes. Quick as a flash he stepped forward over a spreading pool of blood to grab John by the jacket and pull him in for a searing kiss. John froze, shocked into momentary stillness by the surprise of it all, but he could not stay still for long with those lips pressed against his for the first time in longer than he cared to think about. Everything else melted away: the fear, the anger, the fact that they were standing over the corpse of a serial killer, it all vanished. All that mattered were Sherlock’s lips, the grip of his hands tangled up in John’s jacket, the warmth of him spreading out in the chilled night air to curl around John and send heat racing up and down his spine like fire. The kiss was far too brief, a passing thing that was both reassurance and promise of things to come, and yet even as Sherlock pulled away with John was left breathless and staggering in the wake of it.

Looking down John’s gobsmacked expression, a smile flitted over Sherlock’s face that could only be described as self-satisfied in the supreme. “Now come on, we need to go. Are you up for a run?”

John grinned, and the joy of his smile threatened to crack his face in two. “With you? Always.”

Sirens blared, chaos reigned, and Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sprinted laughing into the darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

The first hint of a grey dawn was beginning to crest over the rooftops of London when John and Sherlock finally made it back to the flat. Even though the distance had not been great it had taken them hours to work their way across the city. They had flitted from shadow to shadow, watching carefully for any signs of pursuit either from the police who were surely on the lookout for whomever had murdered the apparently innocent cabbie in an empty construction site or from unknown accomplices of the serial killer they had just taken down. Neither of them had enough cash to catch another cab for the few miles they needed to go, and even if they did after the experience they had just shared neither of them particularly felt keen on the idea of getting into another taxi in the near future.

But it wasn’t just their brush with death at the hands of a murderous cab driver that had them running instead of catching a ride back to the flat. There was something else that drove them to sprint like wild things though the darkness, to pound the streets in a mad dash for freedom on that particular night. Even without needing to speak a word to each other they had both heard the wordless call to run the long way home, to hurry down alleys and race through empty side streets in the dead hours of the night. Sherlock led and John followed, his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of London gained through countless hours spent working on these streets leading them straight and true even when John was so turned around that he could not have found home again if his life depended on it. They wove their way through the maze of buildings and the tangle of narrow streets in an intricate dance, and as they clambered up a fire escape to avoid the sirens they’d heard coming up behind them, John realized that he had never felt more alive.

But whether good or bad all things must come to an end, even those that feel as though they will last a lifetime, and soon enough John began to recognize the landmarks that indicated they were drawing in close to the neighborhood he called home. They had crossed the Thames nearly two hours ago in their winding journey, dashing across one of the more sparsely populated bridges and feeling terribly exposed the entire way, and in the time since then John had only caught glimpses of familiar places as they sprinted past them or hid in the shadows to catch their breath. They had stayed off of the major thoroughfares in order to attract as little attention as possible, but even running down another narrow alleyway now John could tell that they were drawing in close to his flat.

Finally the squat building he called home loomed up through the darkness as they skidded around a corner at as close to full-tilt as they could manage after so long, but even this close to the finish Sherlock did not slow down. John followed hot on his heels all the way up to the door of his dingy flatshare, and as he fumbled for his keys with hands that shook from weariness the memory of a night so similar to this one and yet so very different came rushing in. So many weeks ago he had stood here with heart racing and nerves singing, not with aftershock but anticipation of what was to come. Sherlock had been a stranger then, and the John who had worried so painfully about what his neighbors would think of him was quite nearly a stranger too. How could he have been so concerned with what someone looking out their window at one in the morning would think? How could so much have happened in so little time, and how could his life have ever been anything but this? Coursing adrenaline, gasping breath, electric tension – how could he ever hope to live without it again?

At last, two keys and a swift jog down a darkened hallway later the door slammed shut behind them, echoing through the tiny flat that had never felt quite so welcome in all the time that John had been staying here. There had been moments tonight when the possibility of ever seeing this dismal place again had flickered and faded with every jagged breath, and now that he was here safe and mostly sound he promised himself that he would never think such unkind things about it ever again. Well, at least not for the next few hours.

Gasping for air after their marathon sprint, John leaned his back against the wall as his heart pounded and his legs shook from the exertion that he was no longer accustomed to.

“That was…insane. That was the most insane thing I have ever done in my entire life, I cannot _believe_ we didn’t get caught.”

There was a short huff of quiet laughter from Sherlock from where he rested against the wall next to John. A crooked smile was on his face and life danced in his eyes, and the contrast between this man who laughed with genuinely good natured humor and the one who had teetered on death’s doorstep just a few short weeks ago took away what little breath John still had. “Oh please John, we were never in any danger. The police wouldn’t be able to find me with a map and a tracking signal even if I wanted them to, much less if I’m trying to hide.”

“Oh?” John asked, a smile creeping across his face as well. “If we weren’t in danger of being caught then why were we running practically the whole way? And why did we have to take that ridiculous short cut across the roof?”

Sherlock’s smirk blossomed into a full smile, one that transformed his face and lit it even in the inky darkness. “Because it was fun.”

John looked at Sherlock for a long moment in total silence, blinked twice, and burst out laughing.

“You’re an idiot, you know that right? Only a total moron would think that sprinting across London to escape from the police after killing a murderer and taking an unnecessary diversion across three roofs was _fun_.”

“You certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself. I haven’t seen you that happy in weeks, especially after you jumped off that fire escape.”

“I never said I wasn’t an idiot too,” John said, his laughter subsiding but the smile still lingering on his face. Sherlock’s eyes met his, sending a quick shiver down his spine at the memory of a kiss that he had been trying to forget in case it never happened again. But now that they were alone and safe and away from such distracting things as survival or avoiding capture other thoughts intruded, other thoughts like how it had felt to have Sherlock’s lips pressed against his once more and the searing heat that had flooded through him in that brief moment that had seemed to last a lifetime. Heat crept into John’s face as the silence between them extended, eyes still locked and hearts still thumping with the thrill of the chase that thundered in their veins. A train was barreling down on them now, dangerous and unstoppable, and all John could hope to do was hold on for the ride.

“What now?” he asked, voice quiet as the smile slid off his face.

Sherlock looked away, breaking his gaze to look unseeingly across the room. “Well we obviously need to lie low for a week or two at least, and monitor the news carefully for any signs that the cabbie was connected to the murders –“

“No that’s, that’s not what I meant,” John broke in. “I don’t just mean our plan for the cases, I mean…I mean what we’re doing tonight and tomorrow, what we’re going to do about the future. Listen, we can’t keep dancing around this anymore. Every time we get close to having a real conversation we just pull away and never actually talk about it. Even back there, even after we almost died as soon as we started talking we had to run, and now I’m even more confused that I was before. But after all that, I don’t think I can wait until the next time one of us has a gun to our head to figure it out.”

Sherlock’s gaze was still fixed on some invisible but evidently fascinating thing on the other side of the small room, but that did not stop a grim smile from flitting across his face. “I don’t see why, knowing the two of us it shouldn’t take too long to happen again.”

“Don’t joke about that!” John sighed in exasperation. “And see, you’re doing it again – you’re trying to distract me with that twisted sense of humor you have so we don’t actually talk, but it’s not going to work this time.”

“John, this is ridiculous. There’s no need for this –“

“No see, that’s just it,” he interrupted, desperate to somehow get Sherlock to understand. “ _You_ don’t need to have conversations like this, but not everyone’s like you. You can just look at me, and you know _everything_. You can read it all on me like I’m a book, and you never have to ask anything because it’s all right there. You know what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, hell you know everything about me just by doing…whatever it is that you do. So no matter what I do or how I try to hide it, I know that you know exactly how I feel. About you, about everything. Because you were right, Sherlock, I will always find you, no matter what happens, but it’s not always easy. I have no idea what you think, or what you feel, and I don’t know if I can keep going on like that.”

While he had been speaking Sherlock’s eyes flicked over from their steady gaze on the wall to look at John, wide with surprise and uncertainty before sliding away again to rest on the floor. His shoulders were stiff with tension, knuckles blanched white as he gripped the folds of his coat with hands that were just this side of shaking. “I don’t think I can give you what you’re looking for.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know!” he burst out, looking up from the floor at last as he launched himself away from the wall where they had both been leaning to stand facing John. “You keep asking me questions I can’t answer – what I want, how I feel – and I can’t tell you what you want to hear. Ask me the chemical composition of nicotine or the best way to please a customer and I can answer you, but I don’t know this. I’ve never needed to know this before, and no matter how many times you ask me that won’t change.”

“So, what then?” John asked, throat tight and eyes stinging. “Are you just going to keep ignoring it and hope that it’ll go away?  Has all of this, everything that we’ve been through, has it all meant nothing to you? Do I…am I just another customer for you to please? Just another puzzle to figure out?”

A sarcastic smirk twisted across Sherlock’s face, humorless and sad. “Please John, I thought you could have figured that out at least. You’re many things, but you were never just a customer.”

The full quiet of the pre-dawn hour descended, filling up the flat as John stared at Sherlock in shock. Had he really just heard that correctly? If that were the truth, as John so suddenly and desperately hoped that it was, it would be by far the most honest and heartfelt admission of feeling that Sherlock would have given him yet, no matter how roundabout it may have been. Where before sadness and disappointment had filled him he now surged with hope, and he found that he could barely speak in anything other than a hoarse whisper.

“What?”

“I should have thought it was obvious that you were never like the others. Possibly at first, when you first pulled up to my corner in that cab it was like any other job, but after that everything was different. You were different. Why do you think I kept coming back to you so often?”

All of the words that he had been so desperate to get out mere moments ago vanished, leaving him to stumble and fall over the clumsiness of his own useless tongue. “Because…because I was a regular customer, that’s all. Just one of your regulars that you gave your number to for weekly appointments, because it was easier than having to go out on the street every night.”

“I don’t have regular customers,” Sherlock said with a small shake of his head. “It’s too messy, too easy for feelings to get involved on their side and for some lunatic to convince themselves that they’re in love with you. You were the only customer – the only person that I ever gave my number to so that you could see me again. Except for the ones who sought me out on the streets, you were the only one who saw me more than once. It was only you, John.”

John felt as though he had been punched in the gut. All this time, for all the weeks that he had been seeing Sherlock he had just naturally assumed that he was one of the many customers that Sherlock saw on a regular basis. After all, it only made sense, didn’t it? But no, even with his mind reeling with surprise he remembered the fact that Sherlock had not had a card to give him, only a scrap of torn off newspaper with a hastily scribbled number. He had not needed to schedule an appointment, nor work around any other clients. Sherlock had always been there, always coming to him whenever he called.

“But, why?” he asked.

“Didn’t you hear me, I don’t know!” Sherlock burst out again, turning to pace back and forth in tight turns. “It doesn’t make any sense, none of it does – why I kept coming back, why I stopped looking for clients, why you are the way you are, nothing! Before you it was so simple: sex for money, money for cocaine, cocaine to make the sex bearable. But then there was _you_ , and it all fell apart. With you I didn’t need coke to turn my mind off, and I didn’t want to because when you touched me it wasn’t repulsive. And nothing made sense anymore.”

He stopped on a dime, frantic motion ceasing in front of John as he turned to look at him once more. His gaze was electric, bright blue eyes shining out through the shadows that played across his face and catching John’s breath and heart in one. When he spoke again his voice was quiet, little more than a murmur in the hush, and with every word he spoke he edged himself closer to where John stood still frozen against the wall.

“You want me to tell you what I feel? I can’t, but I can tell you what I know. I know that you look at me like no one has ever looked at me before, like I’m a miracle that you can’t quite believe you’re lucky enough to be seeing. I know that you have never tried to own me, or use me, or take me. And I know that you gave me something to look forward to besides the next hit and the next high. I know that you held me in the rain, and kissed me warm, and when you kiss me I know that it feels better than the cocaine ever could. I know that after kissing you, I couldn’t bear to kiss anyone else because I knew what I was missing.”

They were mere inches apart now, so close that John could feel the heat of Sherlock’s body and the trace of his breath against his skin. John could not think, could not breathe, could not do anything but stare into eyes both bright and clear as he stood paralyzed by what he had just heard. It did not feel possible that Sherlock had just spoken those words or had really meant them, but he knew without even having to ask that he had meant them with every fiber of his being. And that made them better than any heartfelt declaration of love or promise of undying devotion could have ever been.

There was no question what he needed to do. Leaning forward off of the wall he closed what little distance remained between them to grab the fabric of Sherlock’s coat and pull him in for a kiss. He fell forward unresisting, their lips meeting in the middle with a sigh that may have belonged to either of them, or quite possibly both. It was a kiss for promise, for discovery, a kiss to say “Yes, there you are. I’ve been looking for you”.

They clung to each other in the darkness as though they were the only things left to hold. John’s hands slipped away from the fabric of the coat to curl beneath it, skimming gently over Sherlock’s shirt and coming to rest on his waist where they had not been in so long. The warmth of his embrace flooded through John as Sherlock responded in kind, wrapping long arms around him as though he had been waiting his entire life for just this moment. There was nothing left but Sherlock, nothing but this kiss that wiped away every doubt and every worry that had plagued John for so long. This was not the kiss of a man who was being paid for his services or going through the motions of pleasure, and this was nothing like the frantic and desperate kisses they had shared when all they could do was seek the mindless gratification found in skin and touch and release. Now Sherlock held him like a precious thing, pulled him close and kissed with honest tenderness, lips warm against his own and hands coming up to curl delicate fingers through his hair. For all of the intimacy they had shared, all of the gasps and cries let out into the darkness, this gentle kiss left them all behind. And it was like kissing Sherlock for the first time all over again.

At last they broke apart, still holding each other as though this would all be real only as long as they were touching each other. John could not shake the feeling that this could not be happening, that he had dreamed all this and that he would wake up at any moment cold and alone. But Sherlock was here, was warm and alive in his arms, and if the flush in his cheeks and the wonder in his eyes were anything to go by he had just enjoyed their kiss as much as John had. All at once John was ten feet tall, was floating on air, was the happiest man in the entirety of London, and he could not have contained the laugh that escaped him even if he’d wanted to.

“See, that wasn’t so bad now was it?” he asked with a teasing smile.

Sherlock was still not back from wherever he had gone in his head, and so John’s question only earned a distracted “Hmm?”

“Talking about your feelings, I mean. You told me how you felt, and I’d say that it turned out pretty well, wouldn’t you?”

That was enough to snap him back into the present moment, and after a quick moment to process it was even enough to earn a smile. “Yes, I would say that it did.” He hesitated for a moment and the smile flickered, a trace of confused worry coming into his face as it did. “But John, I still don’t understand. Why you want this, why you want me. I don’t understand why you smile when you look at me, why you’ve done so much to keep me close, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

It nearly broke John’s heart to hear those uncertain words from him, but he pushed the pain aside to focus on making sure that uncertainty was never felt again. Untangling his hands from the fabric of Sherlock’s coat he reached up, cradling his face gently with both hands. “Sherlock, you know how you said that kissing me feels better than cocaine? Well when I kiss you, I remember what it’s like to be alive. And I’m not letting that go any time soon.”

He brought Sherlock’s face down towards his once more, craning his neck up to meet halfway and brush a quick and delicate kiss on Sherlock’s lips.

“Now, just for tonight, can we please just forget it all? I want to forget about everything that’s happened or could happen or might never happen, because it’s been far too long since I’ve felt your skin on mine and I think it’s driving me mad.”

A wicked light that John had not seen in more weeks than he cared to think about came into Sherlock’s eyes. Before John could do so much as breathe he had pressed forward, pushing John up against the wall and pinning him there.  Lips were pressed hungrily against his own, hands darted with sinful quickness, and in seconds John was already losing himself to the intensity of Sherlock’s touch. But he was much too eager to be a passive partner in this moment, and he kissed back with the fierceness of too much loneliness at last brought to an end. While Sherlock fumbled clumsily at the hem of his shirt John took the more direct route, pulling his hands away so that he could shove the coat off of his shoulders in one swift motion. It slid to the floor in a crumpled heap, and John’s jacket followed soon after.

Freed of his restrictions Sherlock moved in again, pressing the entire length of his impossibly long and thankfully no longer impossibly thin body against John’s. He kissed John like he had never kissed him before, no longer hurried or frantic but deep and lingering, as though he were savoring and storing each moment. When he opened his lips he did not force his way into John’s mouth to take what he so clearly desired, instead licking delicately as though asking permission that was gladly granted. Gone was the calculated effort to give as much sensation as quickly as possible, replaced with careful but honest uncertainty. Kissing Sherlock was no longer like being caught in a sudden hurricane or seared by a forest fire, it was the slow burn of smoldering embers, and the steady rise of the inevitable tide.

But some things never changed no matter how much time had passed, and soon enough as Sherlock was pressing eager kisses to his neck and throat John found himself needing more. More touch, more skin, more of everything that he had been missing. He grasped at the hem of Sherlock’s shirt with fingers made clumsy by desire, but it was impossible to pull off him while his hands were occupied with John.

Gasping for air around every kiss and every bite that Sherlock planted on the tender skin of his neck, John could only manage to whisper in a voice gone hoarse and throaty, “Shirt. Off. Now.”

Sherlock leapt to comply, pulling away from John with one last kiss. But as he reached down for the hem of his shirt, staring into John’s eyes and moving with deliberate slowness, John knew that something was wrong. Not with what he was doing – there was no denying the fact that the tantalizing movements of his hands as they slowly revealed the pale flesh beneath was one of the sexiest things he had ever seen – but it did not feel right. Not for how they had just been kissing, messy and honest, nor how Sherlock had felt in his arms. This was too much like before, like when they had been strangers and Sherlock had been putting on a show for a nervous and excited customer. This wasn’t real.

“Stop,” he said, and Sherlock paused, looking at him in confusion. “The way you’re doing that, you’re trying to seduce me like you would a client. Don’t perform, not for me. Not anymore.”

Sherlock stared at him, shirt falling back into place, and where before there had been studied and artful seduction there was only vulnerability of a kind that John had never seen before. “I don’t know any other way.”

If John had thought that Sherlock’s words had caused him pain before, it was nothing to the sudden stab of sadness that his bewildered expression brought on now. He looked lost, like a ship left floating with no sails and no map to guide him in to shore. Stepping forward John took Sherlock’s hands in his own, asking softly, “Will you let me show you?”

Sherlock answered with a slow nod, and gently taking his hand John made his way across the room towards the bed with Sherlock trailing in his wake. With a gentle push he sat Sherlock down on the bed, and before he could lay down on it John knelt on its edge to straddle his narrow hips. He loomed over Sherlock in this position, a rare treat for him that he relished only briefly before he reached down to pull his shirt up and over his head. Kisses followed on the bare skin that the shirt had left behind, mere brushes of lips on skin at first as he ghosted across Sherlock’s neck and shoulders that grew with intensity as he moved downward. Licks and nibbles were lavished on winged collarbones standing out sharp and beautiful, kisses were peppered across his chest, and with every swipe of John’s tongue and quick nip of his teeth Sherlock came one step closer to undone.

When at last John made his way to Sherlock’s nipples his head fell back as he leaned into the touch, crying out softly at the feeling of a wet tongue swirling and flicking across one as teasing fingers pinched at the other. Sherlock had done his best to stay upright under John’s ministrations, but at last he could withstand no more and collapsed backward onto the bed into a graceless heap. His eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling, wide and glazed with sensation, and John could not help but chuckle to himself with satisfaction as a swift bite to his oversensitive nipple caused him to groan and roll his eyes back with pleasure.

“That’s it,” he murmured against Sherlock’s skin, “Just let it happen. Don’t act, don’t run away from it, just let yourself feel it. Let go.”

He was not even certain that Sherlock heard him, but the small hum of pleasure/need/please don’t stop that he earned in response to a quick series of kisses down his stomach was answer enough. John could both see and feel as he clambered off the bed and into a kneeling position on the floor that Sherlock was already hard, pressing against the seams of his too-tight trousers with what must have been unbearable pressure. With a quick tug he pulled Sherlock into position on the very edge of the bed and went to work, feathering kisses all along the skin above the waistband of his jeans before licking a broad stripe along it. Sherlock almost arched himself off the bed with a loud groan, and John laughed silently to himself at the extremity of his reaction.

“Oh, is that good?” he asked, running his fingers along the spot that he had just licked. Sherlock squirmed beneath him, long limbs twisting this way and that under the stimulation of John’s delicate fingers. Another lick followed close behind, wet tongue dragging across warm flesh and teasing playfully at the waistband that was keeping Sherlock from what he so clearly wanted.

Keeping his mouth occupied with small licks and kisses John set to work on the button of Sherlock’s trousers, fumbling with fabric pulled too tight by the pressure there and taking little care with how often he brushed against the bulge that was making it so difficult. The gasps that he earned from Sherlock with every touch were enough to drive him mad, and it took all of his willpower not to simply rip the trousers off of him right now and fuck him until those gasps were lost in screams. But no matter how tempted he was or how long he had waited that was not what he wanted to do tonight, not after he had promised Sherlock that he would show him what sex without money could really be. To jump right to the end would be exactly what a careless customer would do, and that it was for that reason that John could never bring himself to do it. Sherlock was worth more than that, and the fact that he knew no other way was something that needed to be remedied as soon as possible.

At last the button and zipper were undone, and thanks to a quick tug and an extremely compliant Sherlock the trousers were thrown aside and his pants soon followed. The sight of him naked and gorgeous on the bed beneath him was enough to take John’s breath away entirely, and the fact that the distant but still functioning logic centers of his brain took note of how much healthier he looked now as opposed to the last time John had seen him like this made it even better. He still had a ways to go yet, but he was no longer a waif made of skin and bones and that alone was enough to make John’s heart soar. The flush on his cheeks, the solidity of his limbs, the realness of him now made him even more beautiful than he had been as an ethereal creature of smoke and darkness.

Settling down on his knees before the bed like a supplicant at prayer, John ran his hands greedily over the pale flesh that had been exposed to him. The striking similarities to their first night together were not lost on him, but he was determined to make sure that tonight would wash those memories away entirely no matter how alike they were. Leaning forward in a way both so similar and so very different to how Sherlock had once upon a time, John allowed himself a quick moment of indulgence to stare at Sherlock’s cock hard and straining for him before he bent his head down to give it a swift lick from base to tip.

The wordless cry that escaped from Sherlock was all the encouragement that John needed. He set to work, licking hungrily along its length several more times before at last wrapping his lips around the tip and moving down with a muffled groan of satisfaction. The world narrowed down to nothing more than this, the feeling of lips and tongue running over Sherlock, the heat of breath and skin, the gasps and groans that every flick of his tongue earned in response. Sherlock was straining beneath him, bucking up into his mouth in rapid time, searching for more sensation than John was giving him. But John held steady, pressing a firm hand on each thigh to hold him in place and keep him from spending too much too fast. Let him sigh in frustration at John’s careful pacing, there was much more to come after this.

But at last after an eternity of lips and tongue that in truth took no time at all, John could tell that Sherlock would soon draw close to an edge he did not want to cross just yet. With one last suck and a lingering trail of his lips John pulled away, looking up to see with deep satisfaction that Sherlock had been reduced to a quivering mess on the bed above him. The curls that had somehow managed to stay intact throughout their many adventures tonight were tangled and mussed, his pale skin flushed across face and chest, eyes shut and mouth wide open as he gasped and arched at the pleasure that he was feeling. At John’s sudden departure however he looked down, eyes snapping open as he sat up slightly to see what could have caused him to stop.

“What are you doing?” he asked, voice hoarse and shaky.

“Stay there,” John answered, standing up swiftly. “Don’t even think about moving.”

Thankfully for once in his stubborn life he followed orders, and John walked over to his nightstand as quickly as the painful bulge in his trousers would allow. It was the work of a moment to pull the drawer open and rummage around for the small tube and one of the foil packets that had sat there untouched for weeks, and straightaway he was back in front of Sherlock with fingers slicked and ready for action. He ran a finger up his inner thigh so that he would know what was coming, earning a shiver and gasp that soon turned into a long moan as the finger pressed its gentle but determined way inwards. John went slowly, aware of just how long it had been, but despite the tightness and the steady clenching of Sherlock’s muscles around him it was not long until he was ready for more.

Where before Sherlock had been squirming and thrusting under John’s tongue, he held perfectly still now, almost as if he were afraid that any sudden movement would break the spell of what he was feeling. It was only when John would push in another few millimeters or adjust the position of his finger slightly that he would lose control and move, thrusting upwards ever so slightly with a quiet gasp. His hands were clenched around the blankets of the bed, knuckles gone white with strain as he trembled with sensation. And when John paired a second finger with his mouth engulfing his cock once more, the stillness snapped.

“John!” he gasped, although in truth it was less of a gasp and more of a whimper than he would have ever admitted. John hummed in satisfaction around his mouthful of flesh, not pausing in his work for a moment.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Sherlock mumbled, brain stuttering on repeat. “John, _God_ , I-“

His words were lost in another moan and bucking of his hips, and time slipped away again into heated and frantic silence. But evidently he could not keep quiet for long, as soon enough his heavy breathing had transformed once more into sighs and hums of pleasure around gritted teeth.

“John, please. Please I can’t, I need…”

“Are you sure?” John asked, pulling his mouth away from Sherlock. “Are you ready?”

He lifted his head up from the bed to look at John, and the blue eyes that met his were wide and wild with need. “Yes. Yes I’m ready, just do it already please.”

All at once John realized that he was wearing far too much clothing. Scrambling up from his knees he pulled frantically at his clothes, fumbling with his shoes and ripping off shirt, trousers, and everything else in record time. In moments he was naked and looming over Sherlock, leaning down for a kiss and pressing every inch of himself against the beautiful creature that he could not quite believe was real. But that body was hot and solid beneath him, overheated flesh brushing against his own and setting every nerve alight as he shuddered with anticipation. He did not break the kiss as he blindly reached for the foil packet next to the tube that was still sitting on the bed next to Sherlock, nor as he gasped into Sherlock’s mouth when he readied himself with a shockingly cold hand, nor even as he pressed himself steadily against and into Sherlock with a drawn out groan of satisfaction.

Things got hazy after that. Hazy and frantic and primal, distilled and purified into touch and pressure and togetherness. They did not speak, did not stop, did not so much as pause for breath as they gave and took and shared what they had been denied for so long. John felt as though he was falling and flying, losing and finding himself in Sherlock’s touch, going to pieces and coming back to life at the same time. He had never known anything as perfect as this and could not imagine living without it ever again.

But it could not last forever. In fact it could not even last that long, not when John had been nearly bursting out of his skin with need before he had even taken off his clothes, and by the look of things Sherlock had felt just the same. The rising pressure inside him told John that he could not go on much longer no matter how much he wanted to, which meant that he needed to get Sherlock off soon if he was to keep his promise. John may not have had any of Sherlock’s special powers of observation but even he could tell that he was closer to the finish than he was, so it was simply a matter of holding on long enough to make sure that Sherlock got the satisfaction that he deserved. Because he did deserve it, now more than ever, and John wanted to be absolutely sure that this time was nothing like any of the others when Sherlock had been at the mercy of uncaring customers.

John leaned in low over the bed, bending down to bring his mouth to Sherlock’s overheated flesh and changing the angle of his thrusts in the process. The combination of a sudden kiss on his neck with the shift in pressure was enough to earn a loud moan from Sherlock, and his hands came up to grab desperately at the skin of John’s back. His fingers dug in sharply, raking lines of fire through his skin, but John did not stop his movements for a moment even as nails dragged down his spine. Nothing would stop him now, not when he could feel how close Sherlock was to finishing in every ragged gasp and with each trembling shift of his weight on the bed beneath him. Just a little further, just a few more thrusts, just one more swift lick across his nipple…

Sherlock screamed. Perhaps it was not exactly a scream, caught instead somewhere between a gasp and a moan and a guttural cry of deep satisfaction, but in the loaded quiet of the flat that closed in around them it electrified the night like nothing other than a scream ever could. For one brief moment, suspended in time, Sherlock went still with a cry on his lips and body rigid with sensation, and everything was perfect.

John’s mind and world went blank seconds later. All of the energy and frustration and desire that had been pent up inside of himself for so long had been steadily cresting, and the sight of Sherlock in such wonderful agony was the push it needed to come crashing down around him. The force of his finish was such that he nearly collapsed on top of Sherlock as his muscles shuddered and shook, emptiness and bliss rushing in to fill the space where need had been. It was with trembling limbs that he pulled himself out of and away from Sherlock before collapsing onto the bed next to him, taking a second after pulling off the condom to wonder if it was worth getting up to clean himself off before deciding that it emphatically was not. Sherlock stirred however, moving slowly as he sat up as though he needed a moment to remember how his limbs functioned.

“Do you need…” John asked, barely able to string two coherent words together around the deep lethargy that had so swiftly taken him.

“I – I’ll get it. I know where everything is by now.”

John’s eyes drifted closed to the sounds of Sherlock padding unsteadily across the flat to find a towel, and by the time he made it back to the bed and thrown himself onto it with an exhausted but contented sigh John had nearly drifted off. The weight of all that had happened in this evening (had it really only been one evening?) caught up with him at last, and the task of keeping awake as the warmth of Sherlock’s body pressed up against him in the comfort of his own bed was too much to bear. But with the last remnants of his consciousness John reached out to wrap his arms around the man who was still for some absurd reason maintaining the distance that they had tacitly agreed on, pulling him close with a sigh of satisfaction. Sherlock went stiff for a moment with surprise, but his own exhaustion was evidently too much to protest the sudden closeness and he relaxed into John’s embrace with a quiet sigh.

But even with the need for sleep taking up most of his mind, there was one thing that John needed to say before slumber claimed him. It had not even occurred to him to worry about this until now, but now that they had come to the part of the evening when his happiness usually fell apart there was nothing John could do but ask to relieve his worried mind. Opening his eyes to look at where Sherlock lay in his arms looking up into the darkness with eyes fluttering closed, he swallowed heavily before speaking to summon his courage.

“Sherlock, I –“ he began, voice catching over the words he did not know how to say. “Don’t…don’t leave again.”

Sherlock broke his gaze from the ceiling to look over at John, a slight frown creasing eyes heavy with weariness. “You know that I wasn’t planning on going anywhere tonight, not when we both need to lay low to avoid the police –“

“No, I didn’t just mean going out somewhere tonight, I meant…I meant after the police investigation dies down, once you’ve gotten completely clean, once you don’t need me anymore. After all that happens, please don’t leave.” John hated himself for how small his voice sounded, how desperate, but he could not help himself. He needed this answer, this affirmation that it had not all been for nothing, that he would not wake one morning to find himself so very alone once more.

Sherlock shifted, moving himself so close to John that their noses were very nearly touching and placing a hand gently on the side of his face. “John, I will always need you.”

Six words, murmured quietly in the darkness of early morning. Six words, no more. And they were enough.


	12. Epilogue

_The Next Day_

A shrill ringing pierced the darkness of the flat, jolting John awake. His heart jumped into his throat at the sudden burst of noise and he sat bolt upright, panic coursing through him as his brain struggled to catch up with the sudden transition from sleep to high alert. The heavy blinds over the window made it almost impossible to tell what time of day it was much less see what was going on, but as John looked around wildly he realized that the sound was not some sort of alarm or warning, but merely his phone that had somehow been turned up to an incredibly high volume. That did nothing to calm the hammering of his heart however, nor did the sudden thrill of surprise as he looked over to his left and saw the figure still sleeping soundly behind him.

With a rush, it all came back to him. Why his clothes were scattered at random around the bed, why he felt like he had been run over by a bus, why Sherlock was sleeping naked next to him in his own bed, all of it. He blinked slowly as he stared at Sherlock's still form, his chest rising and falling gently as he lay with arms stretched out carelessly into John's space, trying and failing to believe that this was really happening. A small voice in his mind kept whispering that this couldn't be real, that this had to be some sort of cruel dream that he would wake up from at any moment to be thrown back into miserable reality, but the longer he looked as his phone dinged angrily again in the background the more he was forced to accept that it was the truth.

_Shit, the phone. What the hell did I do with it?_

Scrambling out of bed with nothing that resembled grace John searched the floor for where his trousers had gone in the mad dash to remove his clothing the night before. Another ring led him in the right direction, and finally right when he was afraid that he would miss the call he dug his phone out of the pocket it had been hiding in. The display said that whoever was calling him at this hour of the morning – wait, afternoon – had their number blocked. That was worrying enough in itself even without taking his previous night's activity into account, but there was always the possibility that the call was over something truly important and so with a worried frown he answered it.

“Hello?” he asked quietly to avoid waking Sherlock.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Watson. You sound as though I’ve just woken you – was it a late night last night perhaps?”

There were a great number of things that John did not want to hear when he was standing naked in the middle of his flat the day after shooting a man in the chest. The sound of Mycroft Holmes' cool and knowing voice coming through the speaker of his phone was quite possibly at the top of that list, and it was enough to make John's blood run cold with dread. A dozen different possibilities and excuses flashed through his mind, each of them more absurd than the last, but with a heavy swallow John manged to get himself back under control before he truly began to panic. If he wanted to deal with this in any manner other than botching it terribly, he needed to focus and keep calm.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, to be honest. What do you want?”

If he felt like lying John might have been able to convince himself that he'd sounded nonchalant and uncaring, but something about half-whispering into your phone while hurrying over to the bathroom in order to keep someone from waking up made it more than a bit difficult to pull off. The only blessing seemed to be that Sherlock was currently capable of sleeping through a bomb going off, and soon John had himself shut up in the only private space in the flat to have the rest of this conversation.

“Well doctor, I was hoping you could solve a small puzzle for me. I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it, but perhaps a fresh pair of eyes will do the trick. Can you do that for me?” Mycroft's voice was calm and measured as he spoke, even verging on pleasant, but John knew better. He would not just call a man that he had kidnapped off the street out of the blue, no matter what he liked to pretend otherwise.

“Something tells me I don’t have much of a choice in the matter.”

“Indeed. But first some context, as I think it may prove useful for you. Because you see, Dr. Watson, as I told you the last time we spoke I’ve not always had the easiest time keeping track of my dear younger brother or keeping him out of trouble. He seems to take a certain kind of joy in slipping away from me, not to mention making my life as difficult as he can in the process. As you might imagine this makes taking care of him rather difficult, and after a certain point I grew tired of receiving phone calls from jail cells at two in the morning and decided to take matters into my own hands. And would you believe that it really is quite extraordinary what a few well-placed connections along with a simple alert and automatic freeze on any cases involving Sherlock Holmes can do for one’s peace of mind.”

He fell silent for a moment, as if he were reflecting on just how valuable an inside man in the police force really was. John's heart was beating painfully by now, his thoughts racing on ahead of what Mycroft was so carefully _not_ saying in that damnably patient voice of his. And if this was going where John was afraid it might be, things were about to become very, very complicated.

“Now, this is where I require your help, Dr. Watson,” Mycroft began again quietly. “Because I was hoping that you could enlighten me as to why, after months of absolute silence, I received an alert this morning that the fingerprints of my little brother were lifted from the scene of a seemingly random murder in an empty construction site, or failing that, why your prints were found there with them? Well, John?”

“I – fingerprints?” John stammered, mind stalling in horror.

The coldness of Mycroft's next words could have frozen the Thames solid. “Yes, John, fingerprints. Now, out of the goodness of my heart I’ve seen fit to use my special connections to put a hold on the case in the deep and abiding hope that this is some sort of unfortunate misunderstanding. If that’s so it can all be cleared up with relative ease, but I’m going to need you to assure me of that. Can you?”

John hesitated, wondering desperately if it were possible to lie his way out of this. If he were a cleverer man he might be able to come up with some sort of elaborate story as to why their prints had been found in that building, but he was no Sherlock and in all likelihood Mycroft would see through his fabrication in an instant. And honestly, after his life had been turned completely upside down in a matter of hours, the thought of spinning and long and complex tale so as not to anger a puffed up know it all was too daunting to even contemplate. Summoning his courage, John answered, “No. I can’t.”

“I see. I must say I’m disappointed, John, and more than a bit confused as well. I speak to you personally, going out of my way to tell you something personal and private in order to ask you a favor, and this is the outcome? After I told you the danger that your association with Sherlock proved to his health, you not only continue to see him but lead him straight into this? What on earth happened?”

“What do you want me to tell you, Mycroft? Do you really want the truth? Fine then – we were there together, and it was because we went looking for the serial killer that the police found dead on the floor. We went there because we solved a crime that they didn’t even know had happened. And we did that, _Sherlock_ did that because he is absolutely one hundred percent clean and sober.”

The silence that answered this statement spoke volumes. John could hear the gears in Mycroft's head turning through the phone, processing what he had just heard and measuring whether or not there was any possibility that it was true. “Clean? Are you certain?”

“Dead certain. He hasn’t used in weeks, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“Well. I must say, if this is true –“

“It is,” John broke in, voice hard.

“ _If_ it is indeed true, and if it doesn’t fall apart in a few weeks like so many other attempts have in the past, then some congratulations may be in order.”

“It’s not going to fall apart, and I can tell you exactly why it won’t.”

John knew that he was about to quite possibly make a drastic mistake, to say more than he should to a man who was quite capable of ruining him utterly, but these words had been simmering inside him for too long to stay silent. Ever since Sherlock had told him in his roundabout ways just how Mycroft had gone about trying to help him, how the fear of jail and rehab had been so deeply instilled in him that he would rather risk death than go to a hospital, this had been building inside of John. And if he didn't say it now, he might never get the chance again.

“It’s because I, unlike you Mr. Holmes, have been with Sherlock supporting him every step of the way. I didn’t just throw him into rehab and walk away, I sat with him every night when he was hallucinating so badly he didn’t remember who I was, and every day when he couldn’t even keep down a glass of water. And I don’t give a shit what you think or what you’ve done, because Sherlock has made his choice and if you were any kind of brother instead of a manipulative bastard you’d let him have it.”

“So that’s to be it then?” Mycroft asked, voice empty of anger but full instead of something that sounded suspiciously like defeat. “You – a washed-up ex Army doctor who needed a drug addicted prostitute in order to feel relevant again – you’re the one who’s going to step in and take control of Sherlock’s life?”

“No, I’m the one who’s helping him live it the way he should. And the sooner you realize that the better you’ll be for it.”

“I can only hope that you’re right, John. Hope is a difficult thing to have when you’ve been let down as many times as I have, but it seems to be all I have left.”

“Listen, I know you don’t trust me and honestly you don’t have any reason to. But trust the fact that I would do anything for Sherlock, and that right now he is both clean and happy. Being here, working on cases again, it’s good for him, and I won’t let anything happen to change that any time soon.”

“Very well. For the present, I will defer to your judgment.”

Triumph sang briefly in John, but reality came crashing back in as he remembered the slight, nagging detail of his fingerprints being found at the scene of a murder. “About the police investigation that you mentioned…”

“Ah, yes. Well, as I have no desire to spend yet more money on bail for Sherlock, I think it would be in everyone’s best interests if this inconvenience were swept quietly under the rug.”

“Yes, that would be, well that would be good. Better for everyone, I mean.”

While John was looking forward to ending this conversation as quickly as possible so that he could either put on a pair of trousers or, more excitingly, get back into bed with the naked man who was still sleeping there, an idea that had just occurred to him stopped him from ending it right there. It was very likely that Mycroft would laugh in his face for what he was about to say, but there was also the possibility that he might not, and the benefits that were to be gained from that far outweighed any potential humiliation that he might suffer.

“Mycroft before you go, there’ a…favor that I’d like to ask you.”

“A _favor_ , John?” Mycroft asked so incredulously that John could almost see the horrified surprise on his face. “It’s only just now that you’re asking me for a favor?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for Sherlock. Because well, he’s going to need a new line of work soon so that he doesn’t drive the both of us to violence in the next few days when the adrenaline from this case has worn off. The old job isn’t exactly an option, not if you want him to actually stay clean, so I was thinking we could both help him find something a little more suitable.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well he does seem to be rather good at this detective thing, doesn’t he? If you really do have such good contacts with the police, which I really hope you do, then maybe you might be able to set something up for us on a regular basis.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Is there anything else you need?” he drawled, clearly more than ready for this conversation to be finished.

“I don’t suppose you happen to have any connections when it comes to finding a flat somewhere, do you?”

-

_Three Weeks Later_

A weak afternoon sun shone over London as John emerged from the Underground station, gleaming off the towering skyscrapers of the beating heart of Canary Wharf. Cathedrals of wealth and business towered on all sides, reflecting even this pallid sun off of every surface until the eyes were dazzled with their brilliance. But John was not interested in gawking at the man-made magnificence around him, concentrating instead on navigating his way through the mid-afternoon foot traffic and city congestion as quickly and efficiently as possible. He had a mission to carry out with the least amount of fuss he could manage, and the faster he found his destination the better.

A short walk away from the tube station was all it took before the enormous building he was looking for came into view, and joining up with a short queue of people making their way back from their lunch breaks John passed through the impressively silent automatic doors into the echoing lobby beyond. This place buzzed with activity and chatter, suit-clad people dashing to and fro as they went about whatever undoubtedly important business they were attending to, and for a brief moment John stood still in the center of it all trying to get his bearings. He knew the name of the office he was seeking in this maze of corporations and law firms, but as he was not intimately familiar with the inner workings of London's business world he currently had no idea how to get there. Thankfully as the carefully organized chaos spun around him he caught a glimpse of a building directory, and after perusing through the endless list of names and titles he found the one he needed on the twentieth floor.

Navigating his way through a place where he most certainly had no part was a strange experience, but thankfully his best suit and a sense of purpose were enough camouflage that no one gave him so much as a second look as he squeezed his way into a crowded elevator. A man and a woman were having an animated discussion about an upcoming financial decision, a small group laughed over some office antics, and a woman whispered furiously down her phone, but no one so much as spared a thought for the man standing alone and apart in the corner of the elevator. Which was exactly the way John wanted it.

Finally he found himself on the twentieth floor and walked quickly past door after door with footsteps that echoed slightly on the marble floor. He very nearly walked past the door that he was looking for, but luckily his eye caught on the understated brass plate set on the wall that bore the name he knew so well, and a quick double check told him that he had come to the right place. That name was the reason that he had left Sherlock behind to make this particular journey, why he had come so far out of his way on a day when he had so many other responsibilities to take care of. But this responsibility was far more pressing, and if all went according to plan, it would pay off a great deal more than anything else he had done recently.

Pulling open the heavy glass door led him into the lobby and waiting room of a small but beautifully appointed office filled with plush chairs and an imposing reception desk across the room. Everything in here spoke of incredible wealth, from the dark wood that paneled the walls to the art that covered them, and even the very nature of the office itself told John exactly what sort of people he was dealing with. That a business run by and comprised of a single man could lease even a small office in this building filled with huge law firms and multinational corporations was nothing short of incredible, and that fact was exactly why it was here in the first place. This office was a statement, an advertisement, a declaration of power and prestige, and it was all centered squarely on the man who had made it all happen.

It made John sick.

Swallowing his revulsion he walked up to the receptionist who was dwarfed by her enormous desk, doing his best not to break the reverent hush that seemed to be reserved for places of worship and financial institutions. Even though he was the only one in the waiting room it took the woman behind the desk several moments to acknowledge him, too caught up in whatever assuredly vital work she was doing to even spare him a glance until she deemed the moment right. After a long silence broken only by the rapid tapping of her keyboard she looked up at him, a bright and empty smile immediately lighting up her face.

“Good afternoon, do you have a meeting scheduled?”

John smiled in return, ignoring the nerves that were fluttering in his stomach. “Yes, my name is John Watson and I have an appointment at 2 PM.”

There was another flurry of typing as she entered his information before smiling at him again. “Ah yes, how wonderful to see you Mr. Watson. Please, take a seat right over there and we'll be with you very shortly. Is there anything I can get for you while you wait?”

“No thank you, I'll be just fine.”

Retreating to one of the plush armchairs that probably cost more than a month of his salary, John settled himself in and ran through his plan in his head one last time. He was taking a huge risk even coming here in the first place, and what he had decided to do on what could easily be called the spur of the moment was even more dangerous. This could very well backfire in his face in a spectacular way, but the determination that filled him now just as it had when he came to this decision told him that he was making the right choice. He needed to do this, and if all went as he hoped it would there was no telling how good the outcome could be.

Five silent minutes went by before the receptionist stood up from behind her desk and came over to fetch John. “Mr. Watson? Thank you so much for waiting, but Mr. Trevor is ready to see you now.”

He followed her down the hallway, passing a glass walled conference room and two other doorways before approaching the door at the very end. She waved him forward with another smile before turning and going back towards her desk, leaving him alone to open the door and go into the office on the other side.

This space was just as elegant and well-appointed as everything else he had seen, and one look around was enough to tell John that everything in here had been designed specifically to reflect well upon the man who was seated at the desk in front of him. Where he had been expecting the clean, modern minimalism that so many other offices seemed to favor, Victor Trevor had chosen instead to surround himself with the sort of classic sophistication that would not have been out of place at a gentleman's club and yet somehow avoided being either stuffy or old fashioned. Shelves of books lined the walls, lit by lamps in brass wall sconces and decorated with photos and certificates. The desk in the center of the room was made of what appeared to be mahogany lovingly polished to a high shine, and the man who sat behind it like the king on his throne could not have looked more at home there if he tried.

John could immediately see how Victor Trevor had risen so far so fast in the world. Even seated he was an impressive specimen of a man, handsome and sophisticated in a way that John had not quite been prepared for. He appeared to nearly as tall as Sherlock but broader in the chest and shoulders, filling out his exquisitely tailored suit in a way that suggested an athletic build. But when he stood up from his chair to smile and extend his hand out to John over the desk John could see that beneath the fine fabric of his dark grey suit there was the beginnings of a slight paunch beginning to form, and the hand he shook may have once been strong and capable but now could only be called soft. There was no denying that Victor Trevor still an imposing man, but the past twenty years spent sitting at desks and working deals had done him no favors.

Forcing his face to remain neutral, John shook the offered hand and met Victor's eye with a smile. “Thank you for taking the time to see me Mr. Trevor, I know that you're a very busy man.”

Victor returned the smile with a well-practiced one of his own before gesturing John towards one of the chairs in front of his desk with a wave of his hand. “Of course, of course, it's no trouble at all. Apologies for keeping you waiting, but there was a phone call that went longer than it should have. You know how these things are.”

“Yes of course. I have to say, you have some lovely offices here. This is all very impressive.”

This earned another smile from Victor, this one far more genuine and self-indulgent than the one before. “Ah, thank you very much for saying it. Yes, we are rather lucky here, aren't we?”

“Oh I think it was a bit more than luck, wasn't it?” John asked, doing his best to keep the sneer out of his voice. “No need to be modest, not with the standing you have. Look at you, successful venture capitalist with more than a dozen big name investments under your belt, and you started up out of nowhere fresh out of university to take the financial world by storm. Quite the accomplishment.”

The smile slid slowly off Victor's face as John spoke, self-satisfied good humor fading into wary apprehension. “Well now, somebody's been doing their homework. I must say Mr. Watson, you have me at something of a disadvantage here, because unless I've committed some sort of terrible faux pas I'm afraid I haven't the faintest clue who you are or why it is that you're here. Have we met?”

“No, no we haven't met yet. But I have heard a great many things about you, things that made it obvious I needed to come meet with you in person.”

“You've heard about me? One terrible thing after another, I'm certain.”

“Indeed. As a matter of fact Mr. Trevor, the reason that I've heard so many things about you is that we happen to share a mutual acquaintance.”

“Oh how fantastic! Did one of my clients refer you over? I simply must know so I can thank them.”

This was it. John took a deep breath, and all the apprehension he had been carrying with him went quiet as he took the plunge. “Well, not exactly. It's an older acquaintance of yours that I've come to know recently, and he's told me all sorts of things about you. Perhaps you remember him? A man by the name of Sherlock Holmes?”

If he hadn't been closely watching Victor's face for his reaction, he would have missed. It flickered there briefly, here and gone again in an instant as he reacted to the name he had probably not heard in nearly twenty years and brought his features back under control in the blink of an eye. But John was watching and waiting, and he saw the recognition and fear that came with it. _Yes_ , John thought, _I have him_.

“I'm afraid the name doesn't ring a bell. Maybe you've mixed me up with someone else?”

“No, I'm quite certain Mr. Trevor,” John said, leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on his knees and tent his fingers under his chin in deliberate mimicry of the man who had driven him here. “There's no mistaking you, after all. But your university years were _such_ a long time ago, it's natural that some things would slip. Would you care for me to remind you of a few of the things that happened between you two?”

“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about -” Victor blustered, only to be cut off midsentence by John.

“Oh, but I think you do. Because there were _many_ things that Sherlock told me, Mr. Trevor, like what you were like in university, and what sort of relationship you had, and just how you managed to build this little empire of yours out of nothing. That was the most interesting thing of all, how it was that you earned all that money you used to start this. Being a venture capitalist isn't cheap after all, and yet you had everything you needed right out of school. How very resourceful of you.”

John's heart was thumping painfully by now, adrenaline coursing through him as he said the words that he'd planned with such care. What he was doing now was dangerous and quite possibly incredibly stupid, but even though he knew the consequences he also knew as surely as he knew himself that this was the right thing to do. He needed to take this risk for his own peace of mind and for the future he was trying to build, and if there was danger along the way, well, that was nothing new for him.

“I must say, the scheme you had going was very nearly impressive. It worked out quite well for you, didn't it? Selling drugs to kids, I mean, and making sure that you found the ones that were young, naïve, and of course very, very rich. Because that's how it worked, wasn't it, that your little friend Seb would track down the ones with money to burn who were just getting their first taste of freedom and bring them over to you. And it was just easy then, reeling them in and getting them hooked, until soon enough they couldn't stay away and you could just bleed them dry. You took every penny they had, and then when there was nothing left you just kept on taking. Tell me, Victor, which part did you enjoy more? Was it when you got those dumb rich kids addicted to your drugs, or when you raped them once they couldn't pay you?”

“How dare -” he interrupted, face contorted in anger, but there was no stopping John now that he had started. He continued speaking right over Victor's indignant outburst, face hard and implacable in the face of the monster that he had cornered.

“And you know, what I find the most incredible out of all of this, is that we're even sitting here having this conversation. The fact that after everything you did, after all the laws you broke and the people you broke too, that you got away with it free and clear. But I guess it makes some kind of sense, after all who are they going to believe? A charming, wealthy, enterprising business man or the penniless drug addicts you left scattered in your wake? Well, I hate to break it to you, but you didn't manage to ruin all of them. Not completely.”

Silence fell. Victor stared at John across the wide expanse of his desk, the mask of righteous indignation slipping away as he leaned back in his chair. Calculating coldness was left in its wake as he looked John up and down, truly examining him for the first time now that his hand had been played. He was no longer a charming and affable businessman, no longer a pillar of the community horrified at the accusations that had been leveled at him – now he was a warrior ready for battle, a snake lying in wait, a trap about to be sprung. His mask had been stripped away, and now he was dangerous. “So, you think you're going to blackmail me? Is that it?”

“Oh, yes,” John said with a smile.

“You're a fucking idiot,” Victor spat, face twisting in scorn. “Do you really think I'd be sitting here today if I'd been stupid enough to leave a paper trail behind me? Or any sort of evidence of what I'd done? You think you can intimidate me with this story you've got, but behind it all you have nothing. No proof, nothing.”

It was all that John could do to keep himself from laughing at Victor's words. They had been meant to intimidate him, to scare him off as Victor had undoubtedly scared off so many lesser men who had challenged him before, but it was not fear that filled John now as he heard those words. It was exultation. Because of all the things that he had thought that Victor might say to him when threatened, that was the one he had been hoping for the most.

Allowing a small smile to play across his face, John leaned back in his chair to mirror Victor's position. “See the question you need to ask yourself, Mr. Trevor, isn't whether or not I have any proof. It's whether or not I need it. Because, well, the internet is a funny thing. I don't quite understand all of it myself, but I _do_ know that it doesn't so much matter whether something on the internet is true as much as whether or not it's a good story. And what do you think would happen if I started telling this story? What would happen to you if your wife, your clients, your business partners, if they found out all these little facts about your past? Because I think with a few properly detailed stories told to the right people, a whole world can come crashing down.”

“You have no idea who you're dealing with," Victor said quietly, voice low and dangerous. "Do you really think you can just waltz in here off the street and threaten me like this and get away with it? I am a powerful man, Mr. Watson, more powerful than you realize, and I can do things to you that will leave you wishing you'd never been born much less thought about trying to blackmail me. Because you're not the only one with connections, and even though it's been a very long time since university I've not lost track of dear old Sherlock quite yet.”

Victor smiled, and it was nothing like the affable and welcoming grin that he had worn as a mask when John first entered the room. This was twisted, and ugly, and the sight of that disgusting leer on Victor's face as he spoke Sherlock's name made John feel suddenly and violently ill. “I do so like to keep tabs on my pets after I've let them go, it's just such good business policy you see. And oh, the things I know about him. You want stories? I could tell you ones about that pretty little thing that would make your hair curl. He loved it, every second of it, and when it came right down to it I barely even had to ask before he was on his knees begging for me to fuck him so he could get one more hit. Thank goodness he put those talents to good use with his new career, it'd be such a shame if they were wasted. But believe me when I tell you that I can ruin Sherlock Holmes any time I please. I've done it once before, and it would give me nothing but pleasure to do it again.”

Anger exploded inside of John, hot and painful. His vision went red as he stared at the piece of filth that was sitting so close to him and smiling with such disgusting satisfaction, and it was all that John could do to keep himself from leaping out of his chair and strangling the bastard where he sat. But as satisfying as it would be to kill him right now, and even though it would undoubtedly leave the world a better place without him in it, John swallowed his rage and focused his fury towards something more productive. Leaning forward in his chair once more John met and held Victor's gaze, not even blinking as he spoke low and fervent words that were less of a statement than a sincere promise.

“Let me tell you something right now, Mr. Trevor. If you don't agree to my terms I won't hesitate to tell the world what I know about you. But if you even _think_ about going after Sherlock, I will end you. I will take you apart piece by piece, taking away every single thing that you have ever cared about, and then when you have nothing left but your rotten soul to keep you company, I will kill you.”

The smile slid from Victor's face as he returned John's unblinking stare. John could see the disbelief and scorn that flitted through him that soon turned to shock and quite possibly even a touch of fear as he realized that John had not been joking. “Who the hell are you?”

“Me? Oh, I'm nobody. But you, Mr. Trevor, you are a somebody. And that is a very dangerous thing to be.”

There was a beat of silence before Victor's shoulders slumped downward in defeat. “Fine. I just...fine. What the fuck is it going to take to get you out of my office?”

“Well first of all, I think it's high time that we had a little discussion about fairness.”

-

A little over an hour later, John Watson stepped out of a cab onto a residential London street with a decided spring in his step and what his sister would eloquently call a shit eating grin plastered all over his face. Were the dictates of English restraint not so thoroughly embedded into his very soul he might even consider skipping, but all things considered he did allow himself a happy whistle and a cheery wave to the nonplussed cab driver as he sped away from the curb. It was amazing what a bit of blackmail and well-deserved revenge could do for the constitution, a pleasing side effect that he had not initially considered but was now enjoying immensely.

As a matter of fact the last month had been, well, pretty wonderful, and whenever John found himself reflecting on that fact he began to wonder if this was really his life or whether it had been temporarily switched out for someone else's. It hardly seemed possible that things could have been going this well for this long, but every time he began looking for the cracks that would make everything tumble down around him they were nowhere to be found. He had a job that he enjoyed, lived with the man he could not believe he was lucky enough to have, and most importantly of all that man had not only stayed clean but was continuing to regain his health and happiness every day.

It was true that there were still bad nights every now and then. There were the times when Sherlock would get the far-off look in his eyes and restless energy seeping through his skin that was a clear warning signal for the danger that was to come. Those nights were anything but fun, when John would have to watch Sherlock like a hawk to gauge his mood and his cravings, doing anything he could to distract him so that the memories of what he had given up would not consume him. But as treacherous as those nights were they were also to be expected, a normal part of the healing process that John had planned for, and their frequency had been gradually diminishing as time went on. The last few days had been blissfully clear, and as the nights went by with no fear of relapse lurking on the edge of his consciousness John had begun to hope that the light at the end of the tunnel might be drawing near.

All of this meant that his mood was currently somewhere up in the clouds that were scudding through the pale blue sky overhead, and as he looked around to examine the buildings that lined this quiet street he found that things were only improving. His hopes had not been high when the contact they'd been given for this afternoon had turned out to be someone that Sherlock knew from his past, but contrary to the dismal expectations he'd had this part of town seemed to not only be peaceful and clean but even bordering on lovely. The flats and homes here looked to be standard for a middle-income neighborhood, the location was as central as one could wish, and everything already seemed to be far exceeding his expectations. Mycroft may have proven himself to be quite the conceited prick, but John did have to admit that he had good taste.

Just as he was beginning to wonder whether or not Sherlock would remember that they did in fact have an appointment this afternoon a black cab pulled up next to where he was standing on the pavement. The Sherlock that got out of the cab after paying the driver was nearly unrecognizable compared to the man that John once knew, a thought that still startled him and filled him with a warm glow of happiness every time he thought about it. Gone were the gaunt cheeks and ashen skin, vanished were the empty eyes glazed over and unseeing, and hopefully gone for good were the nervous tics and uncontrollable shakes that were so frightening to see. Sherlock had gained enough weight over the last few weeks to not only fill out the hollow spaces between his ribs but very nearly look like a healthy adult, although John had a sneaking suspicion that he would always be irritatingly and beautifully slender no matter how much he ate. The new clothes that they had bought for him last week were the final piece of the puzzle, elegant button up shirt and crisp trousers suiting him far better than the ratty tee shirts and garishly skinny jeans that had been his uniform before. Even his coat looked the part now, newly repaired and back to some of its original glory after a long session with an accomplished tailor. The man who had lurked in the darkness waiting for his next hit was long gone, and John could not have been more glad of it.

John could not help but smile fondly as Sherlock walked over towards him, earning a quizzical look that he answered with a shake of his head. “Oh nothing, I was just starting to think you'd forgotten we were meeting here this afternoon. I'm just glad you remembered.”

“Forget?” Sherlock asked with a small frown. “How could I forget with you reminding me every ten minutes for the last two days? I'm surprised you weren't texting me to remind me just to make sure.”

“I can't always be your nanny Sherlock, I do occasionally have to be in meetings after all. But it looks like the nagging worked, so I'll count this as a victory.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock said, an unreadable look on his face. “Speaking of your meeting, how did it go?”

John hadn't been expecting Sherlock to care in the slightest about where he had been all afternoon as he usually could not be bothered with anything that did not directly pertain to him, but luckily he was a good enough bluffer to pass it off without too much bother. “Oh, um, it was fine. Just a staff meeting for the clinic, but it went well I think. We came to some good arrangements.”

Sherlock looked him up and down, face serious more serious than the conversation warranted, sending a spark of nerves running through John. Was it possible that he somehow knew what John had actually been up to this afternoon? No, that was impossible. He'd been careful, exceedingly so in fact, only doing his research when Sherlock was asleep and doing his best to leave no tracks behind him. But the frown that Sherlock wore now did not bode well for him, and when he finally spoke it a chill of ice running up his spine.

“John, about what you did this afternoon – I understand why you felt the need to take such steps and I appreciate the lengths you went to. But never do anything like that again.”

“I, I don't know what you're talking about,” John stammered, “I was just at a work meeting -”

“Victor Trevor is not a man to be trifled with,” Sherlock cut in, voice hard. “What you did was reckless, possibly even dangerously stupid, and I won't thank you to have your sentiment for me drive you to make decisions like that. Tell me you'll never do that again.”

“How did you – oh, never mind. Fine, I did go talk to him, and I'll have you know that things went off without a hitch. We worked out a little arrangement, and I know that he won't ever be bothering you or me again. It was fine.”

“John,” Sherlock said, clearly not believing his reassurances in the slightest.

“Alright, alright. I won't go off and blackmail a sadistic millionaire tycoon again without talking to you about it first. Is that ok?”

Sherlock did his best to keep his face serious, but John knew him well enough to see the slight flicker of a smirk that he'd earned before he returned to the matter at hand. “Whatever happened with him, we'll have to be careful. Victor has never forgiven any slights easily, and I've seen what he's willing to do to people who've tried this sort of thing before.”

“Oh, I think we'll be alright. Even if he does decide to come after us, I made sure that we'd be able to take care of ourselves.” John allowed himself a triumphant grin as he reached into his pocket, fishing out the phone that had been sitting there alert and ready all afternoon. With a few quick swipes he brought up the recording feature, smug satisfaction filling him as realization dawned on Sherlock's face. “Handy things, smartphones.”

Stepping forward, Sherlock quickly grabbed John's lapels and pulled him into a brief but elated kiss. John returned it happily, still not quite able to believe that this incredible man was kissing him but enjoying it fully all the same. When Sherlock pulled away his eyes were shining with pride, a sight that made John's heart swell nearly to bursting, and any worries he might have had over Sherlock's anger or the uncertain future ahead of them fell away as if they had never been. Sherlock was healthy, and happy, and kissed him for the joy of it. What more could he hope to have?

Face still glowing, Sherlock looked over at the door that John had completely forgotten about in the last few seconds. “Well, let's get this over with, shall we? Don't want to be late after all the work my dear brother put into arranging this.”

He strode over to the black door that gleamed in the afternoon sun and raised a gloved hand to knock three times as John followed close behind. After a few seconds there was the sound of a slight commotion and the door flew open, revealing not the hardened ex-con that John had been half expecting but instead a petite elderly woman who looked as though she could very well be Sherlock's mother. She beamed at him with arms outstretched, and to John's very great surprise Sherlock smiled back and leaned down for her to wrap her arms around his neck in a quick hug.

“Oh Sherlock, it's so lovely to see you again! I can't believe how long it's been, how long since I last saw you? Three years?”

“Yes, I believe it's been three years and two months since we last met. And how is your charming husband doing by the way?”

“Still rotting in a Florida prison cell thank goodness, and may he stay there forever.” Still smiling, she looked over Sherlock's should to where John was standing on the sidewalk. “But who's this with you dear, I don't believe we've met before.”

“Of course, let me introduce you. Mrs. Hudson, this is Dr. John Watson, and he's come to look at the flat with me today.”

John reached out his hand and Mrs. Hudson shook it warmly, beaming for all the world like a proud parent whose child has brought home a new friend. Stepping back to allow them into the warmly decorated entryway of the building she ushered them inside and up the stairs, chattering away all the while.

“Lovely, lovely. Well come on in boys and let me show you around. Let me tell you, you're both very lucky to even have the chance to look today. There were two other couples who were more than interested in renting this place up until a few days ago, and then _poof_! Right out of nowhere they just vanished, haven't heard a word from them since. No clue what could have scared them off, the rent is quite reasonable and the flat is even furnished with some lovely pieces, but thankfully your brother's people contacted me just in time so it's all worked out in the end. Ah yes, here we are.”

They stepped through the door of the flat into the sitting room, and in an instant John knew that he had found his home. Even though it was sparsely decorated with the necessary furniture like a kitchen table and two mismatched armchairs the rooms here still resonated with the comfort and intimacy of a place well lived and well loved, one that already felt more welcoming than the dingy flat he was currently staying in. The decorations may have been on the bit old fashioned side – where exactly did one find brocade wallpaper these days? - but somehow that only made it feel cozy instead of stuffy, and something inside John connected with it instantly. Mrs. Hudson's persistent patter of words faded into the background as he looked around, letting his imagination run away with him as he filled in the empty spaces of an untenanted flat that could very soon be a home.

The wooden floorboards creaked with soft footsteps as Sherlock walked up behind him and leaned down to speak quietly into his ear. “What do you think John?”

John turned around, meeting Sherlock's gaze with a grin. “I think it's perfect. Bit of decorations, bit more furniture, and I think we can call it home. Do you like it?”

Sherlock smiled, the private one he kept just for John that made his eyes shine like stars, and John was briefly certain that his happiness would overwhelm him. But the moment was broken by the sudden chime of the new phone they had bought for Sherlock when they had purchased his new clothes, startling them both with its loudness. There was no one who needed to call Sherlock for anything, not unless...

“Who is it?” John asked, voice catching in anticipation.

Sherlock's face as he read the text message there told him everything that he needed to know. “The inspector I told you about, the one I worked with before. There's been a bank robbery but nothing was taken, and Lestrade's finally convinced the other morons he works with to give us a shot. He wants us at the scene right away.”

He looked up from the phone to meet John's eyes, excitement like John had never seen welling up inside him. He looked for all the world like a child on Christmas morning, like his dearest wish had just been granted, and in many ways it had. This one text message was the chance for him to start his life over, and this time he had John to make sure that it did not slip away from him.

“Are you ready John?”

“Oh, God yes,” John answered, echoing his own words from a lifetime ago and meaning them even more earnestly than he had before.

Sherlock turned on his heel and ran down the stairs, brain already spinning away in his own private world of puzzles and fingers flying on his phone, somehow managing all of this without tripping over himself in his excitement. A grin spread over John's face as he watched him, heart pounding with a sudden surge of adrenaline as he turned back towards the baffled landlady.

“Sorry Mrs. Hudson, got to dash. Crimes to solve, criminals to catch, you know how it is. But I think we've seen enough here anyway, and we'd love to rent the flat if you'll have us.”

“Oh you're leaving already?” Mrs Hudson asked, scandalized by the sudden turn of events. “But you haven't even seen the upstairs bedroom!”

“That's fine, we won't be needing it.”

The sound of an impatient door slamming down below called to John, and with a laugh on his lips and adventure calling his name he dashed down the stairs and into the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here at the end of it all, I would like to take a moment to thank a few very important people who made this story possible.  
> Thank you to the people who encouraged me to actually continue on with this story after the first chapter, as without your kind words I would not have had the courage to take a smutty oneshot and turn it into a full length piece of fiction. Thank you to my incredible beta and wonderful friend Jess for holding my hand every step of the way and giving me more advice and support than I ever could have hoped for - without you my dear this story would probably not exist much less be half as good as it turned out to be. And finally thank you to every single person who read this story. I never dreamed that this story would even exist much less turn out the way it has, and with every hit, kudo, and comment you all made this possible. Thank you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Covers for Filthy/Gorgeous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/981580) by [bbcsjohnlock (Science_of_Induction)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Science_of_Induction/pseuds/bbcsjohnlock)
  * [Cover Art for Filthy/Gorgeous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1220182) by [yellowflashz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowflashz/pseuds/yellowflashz)




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